Holiday-Inspired Mix-Ins Are The Key To Festive Chocolate Chip Cookies

Word has it that the chocolate chip cookie was invented by accident in the 1930s. However, this was apparently not the case. The short of it is that Ruth Wakefield, the woman associated with the invention of the cookie, didn't accidentally drop chocolate chips into her cookie recipe, as legend would have you believe. Instead, she did this on purpose, and thank goodness for holiday cookie exchange parties everywhere that she did. Wakefield proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the basic chocolate chip cookie recipe might just be the best base for cookie flavor mash-ups. It's practically in the cookie's sugar-laden DNA.

Fast forward to the cookie exchange season of 2024. If you've been tasked with bringing the fixin's for chocolate chip cookies to your next holiday cookie swap, you might want to take a lesson from Milk Bar's chef, founder, and CEO, Christina Tosi, who has some pretty nummy suggestions for cookie mash-ups done right. Tosi spoke to Chowhound recently about how home bakers can make chocolate chip cookie recipes more exciting. She said, "Add McCormick Pure Peppermint extract into the dough along with crushed candy cane pieces, pretzels and white chocolate chips!"

That cookie mash-up is similar to the one that Tosi is making with spice brand McCormick for the 2024 McCormick Cookie Quest, a seasonal contest that gives cookie lovers a chance to earn ten grand for sharing their favorite holiday cookie recipes (and memories) with the spice company. To kick things off, Tosi and McCormick offer up their own cookie recipe mix-up, the Candy Cane Pretzel Bark Cookie recipe, which is available at select Milk Bar locations until the end of December.

For the uninitiated, the holiday cookie exchange is a type of party that cookie lovers hold each year. Guests bring their favorite cookie recipes to the party. Once there, attendees share some of their cookies with everyone else. This exchange ensures that all party-goers get an assortment of cookie flavors to take home with them after the party ends. Due to the cookie's popularity, it isn't unusual to see an assortment of chocolate chip recipes on the exchange table.

Fortunately, because the chocolate chip cookie is basically cookie dough with chocolate chips added, it's a pretty flexible cookie. In other words, it's a logical cookie to play around with from a flavor perspective. Some of these swaps are very simple. For example, instead of making your regular chocolate chip cookies, add chocolate chips to your peanut butter cookie recipe of choice to get a cookie that's a nod to your favorite peanut butter cup candies.

Or if you'd like a more festive-looking cookie, go one better and do a peanut butter base thumbprint cookie and top it with a Hershey's Kiss plus some caramel bites. Go with candy cane-flavored Hershey's Kisses for some extra holiday cheer.

Nowadays, the candy chips market is more expansive than it used to be. Sure, you can still get some pretty gourmet chocolate chips to go into your cookies. However, chips now come in flavors like butterscotch, white chocolate, and even creme de menthe, care of Andes.

Christina Tosi has some additional suggestions for working with those types of chips. "Add eggnog spices and cinnamon-y cereal," she suggests. The James Beard Award-winning chef goes on to say, "Sub the chocolate chips for butterscotch chips" to create a flavor mash-up that goes beyond a plain chocolate chip cookie. Tosi also proposes some other ingredient hacks that are bound to take the flavor of your cookies to the next level. Among them are gingersnap cookies as a base mixed with an assortment of nuts, like roasted chestnuts or holiday nuts.

Finally, keep in mind that the cookie exchange is supposed to be fun in a comfort food-dessert kind of way. That means that any comfort food cookie recipe, like shortbread, double chocolate rye cookies, pumpkin spices, or even plain oatmeal raisin cookies, could be good candidates for a few sprinkles of chocolate chips. You're only limited by your imagination come cookie-baking time.