SPOOOOOOKIEST COOKIES.

It was a dark and chocolate night....

Cleo and I needed a treat last night. This year we're spending halloween all on our lonesome since R is away on band tour and my dress-up friends are visiting New York, boo hoo for us. Lucky these cookies help soothe a couple lonely girls while also containing the requisite orange and black of the season. Essentially just chocolate chip cookies with the addition of sweet/sour, chewy dried apricots, these babies have quickly become my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe of all.

First start with some good chocolate. I like to use super dark, bitter bars but regular chocolate chips work fine and I've even used chopped-up leftover chocolate truffles at christmas which made for some truly amazing cookies.

Next some apricots. The best kind to use are the brown, wrinkly organic ones which have not been treated with sulpher dioxide, but my little local grocery only had the plump sunmaid variety. Oh well, the colour's right.

Chop up 1 1/2 - 2 cups of chocolate and 1/2 cup dried apricots.

Measure out 2 cups of flour and add 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt. Meanwhile melt 3/4 cup butter (you could certainly use margerine but I use butter because butteriness is next to godliness) and let it cool slightly. To the melted butter add 1 cup packed brown sugar. Beat an egg and add to the sugar/butter mixture (+ an extra yolk if you have one, if not don't worry about it). Also add 1TB of vanilla (and PLEASE, if anyone is going to Mexico in the near future, I am almost out of vanilla and in desperate need of more. Bring home vanilla!). Beat lightly.

Add dry ingredients to the wet until just combined and gently mix in chocolate and apricots. Oh, and you should've pre-heated your oven to 325 and lined some cookie sheets with parchment. Drop heaping tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheets, spaced at least 1 1/2" apart and cook for 12 minutes. You should end up with about 16-18 cookies.

And if you're like me, you'll eat them for breakfast the next morning. Be like me, do the breakfast cookie thing, it's fantastic. On the other hand, DO NOT be like me if you feel the urge to watch Paranormal Activity right before bed the day before halloween. Watching a film about a demonic presence literally making things go bump in the night when you're home alone for two weeks in a relatively new apartment? And it's 100 years old? And the plumbing's not great? And you've just turned the furnace on for the first time? Yeah, great idea dummy.