Now that the weather’s starting to get cold, I’ve been craving lots of comfort foods. Things made with butter. Things that make you feel cozy.

I cook a lot at home. It’s partly out of desire, but mostly out of necessity as life feels almost unbearably expensive if I’m eating out all the time. And I’ve noticed that the foods I’m most interested in consuming, the dishes I’m most interested in creating, are the comfort foods. Nothing fancy or delicate or complex. Just stuff that makes me feel warm and happy and loving.

So when I went snooping around the candy stash in my kitchen recently, finding Butterfingers felt like just the right thing. I loved these when I was a teenager, but as an ‘adult’ (har har), my tastes have changed and eating an entire Butterfinger bar now feels like candy overkill. Making cookies with them, though…

The first batch I made with three mini-Butterfingers and ended up inhaling almost every cookie that came out of the oven (five being consumed solely for Quality Assurance purposes, of course). The second batch I decided I wanted more of a Butterfinger presence so I mashed up four mini-bars. Still, next time, I think I’ll try mixing in five or six.

Excuse me, while I drool for a minute.

I’m not huge into baking, so I just picked up a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe from the internet, rather than using a ‘favorite’ or an ‘old family recipe’. Surprisingly, the Chinese don’t have one of those? Maybe it’s next to the Soy Sauce Chicken recipe…

Then, instead of chocolate chips, I crushed up four mini-Butterfingers and stirred the orange flakes into my cookie dough.

This is now my new favorite cookie by far. Really. Cannot. Stop. Eating.

The recipe I used:

Ingredients (Makes ~ 18-20 cookies):

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract (I felt like this was a little much? Next time, I’ll probably use less.)
• 1 egg
• 4 Butterfinger mini bars

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F° and grease your cookie pan or line it with parchment paper. In a large-ish bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In another medium bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla and egg until light and creamy. Slowly mix in the sifted ingredients.

At this point, you’d mix in the chocolate chips to make chocolate chips cookies. Instead, tear a large sheet of aluminum foil and use it to create an envelope around the Butterfingers  (aluminum foil because  it is strong enough to take a beating but thin enough to let you pulverize the candy inside). Then, SMASH! away.

Stir in the Butterfinger flakes. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Try not to eat all at once sitting in front of the TV. That’s not projecting, I’m just saying.