Happy National Chocolate Chip Day!! A day where we celebrate the tiny little nuggets of chocolatey goodness. A little history lesson: the chocolate chip was invented back in the early 1930s by Ruth Graves Wakefield at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. She had been making cookies one day and added a chopped up bar of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate. Some say it was intentional (she was trying to change up a toffee cookie recipe), others say it was accidental (she ran out of baking chocolate and used a bar of Nestle, expecting it to melt completely). Either way, they were such a hit that she ended up striking a deal with Nestle to provide her cookie recipe on the package of the Nestle chocolate bars in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate. The Nestle Toll House brand is named after the inn where she cooked up her now world famous recipe! Quick aside: anytime I hear Nestle Toll House, I think of the Friends episode where Monica tries to recreate Phoebe's grandmother's cookie recipe, only for it to actually be the Nestle Toll House recipe or as Phoebe says it "NESS-lay TOOL-ow-zeh". You can catch a clip of it here.

So, history lesson out of the way, what better way to honor this most auspicious of days than with a batch of chocolate chip cookies? But let's not just make regular ole' chocolate chip cookies...let's make them with a twist! And so I give you Kit-Kat Krispies...a crispy-on-the-outside, soft-and-chewy-on-the-inside chocolate chip cookie loaded with Kit-Kat bars, semi-sweet chips, Rice Krispies and potato chips. Yes, potato chips! Trust me...you'll want to add a lunch sized bag of potato chips to your chocolate chip cookies from now on.

This recipe was the product of some experimentation and merging of a couple recipes. A few years ago, I discovered this amazing dessert restaurant in New York City called Milk Bar (if you're ever in NYC you MUST go!). Their claim to fame is the Compost Cookie, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cookie that utilizes a little bit of whatever you have on hand: chocolate chips, pretzels, candy bars, coffee grinds, graham crackers, nuts, whatever. There's a lot of creaming (10 minutes worth!) and some chilling of the dough (at least 2 hours) and making a graham cracker crust to crumble in. All of which is worth it when you have the time. But most of the time, when I'm in the mood for chocolate chip cookies, I've got an inner Cookie Monster rumbling inside and she wants her cookies NOW! So I took the concept of adding in a variety of different ingredients you wouldn't normally throw in a chocolate chip cookie and applied it to my very favorite and easy chocolate chip recipe. This is a highly adaptable recipe; you can make it as simple or complex as you like. Just try to keep the total volume of your mix-ins to about 1 1/2 cups. O-YUM-G! So here we go:

KIT-KAT KRISPIES

1/3 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup shortening, butter-flavored
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 packages Kit-Kat bars (regular size), chopped
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup Rice Krispies cereal
1 oz bag potato chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream your butter, shortening, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and mix until smooth and lightened in color. Add your flour, salt and baking soda. Mix until just combined. Then stir in the Kit-Kat pieces, chocolate chips, Rice Krispies and potato chips. Stir until just combined. Don't overmix. With a cookie scoop, portion out balls of dough onto ungreased cookie sheet about 1-inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden brown. Don't overbake. Let cool on the cookie sheet for 2-3 minutes; then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Yields 32 cookies.