The way to a person's heart is through their truffles

Warning: This recipe may cause spontaneous declarations of love and ardent offers of sexual favors.* Do not make these without proper safety procedures in place.

Right, so a lot of people I know love chocolate chip cookies and their dough; me, not so much. I mean, they're okay. But I've been making chocolate chip cookies since I was about seven; they just don't hold much interest for me anymore. I know I'm in the minority here, and realizing this I decided to try out this recipe for all the people in my family who lick the spoon after mixing up some cookie dough.

First off, this is one of those times where you bust out the Good Stuff. This recipe is unbaked, so the full flavors of everything you put in here are of tantamount importance. I used to have the Good Vanilla in my cupboard along with the Regular Kind (read: real vanilla verses imitation flavored extract), and in a lot of cases, I couldn't taste the difference. I know, I'm a Philistine. But a lot of the flavor of vanilla is lost in baking, and is really more of a background note. In this particular case, you can definitely taste (and smell) the difference.

I don't advocate the use of margarine or a similar substitute here unless that substitute includes butter (like Smart Start sticks, which are half and half). It's a texture thing, and vegetable-based substitutes have a higher water content than butter.

And I do want to stress the importance of the size of your chips. Big chips are going to take up too much room, and make these less likely to stick together. Get a bag of the mini-chips, they're probably on sale this time of year.

Here we are waiting for refrigeration.

And they are awaiting their dip. Do line whatever you've got these sitting on with waxed paper or parchment: as they thaw out, they tend to stick to whatever they're sitting on. Also, don't make them too big; I use a regular cereal spoon to gouge these out. I'm particularly mindful of this because my mom makes Buckeyes this time of year and by the time she's finished dipping the monsters, they're the size of softballs ("Your niece likes them that size!" "Yeah, but I don't want to die of sugar shock by the time I'm done eating one!").

The recipe recommends freezing them for about an hour before dipping, but well...

Yeah.

Oh Candy-Quik, whatever would I do without you in December? Probably learn to temper chocolate properly.

I only dip these a few at a time, because of the aforementioned thawing problem. If you freeze them, then you can probably get them all done at once. Half a recipe made 36 of these little buggers, so beware.

Ahh the final result. That's one of my better specimens, as I am by no means a graceful dipper.

Think of the possibilities with this one: Mini peanut butter chips and substituting half the butter for peanut butter. Adding in finely chopped pecans or toasted coconut. White chocolate chips with macadamia nuts and white chocolate dip. I did none of these because I've got some relatives with Definite Opinions on the matter of nuts, so I compromised by adding 1/4 t of pure almond extract in my batter, and they are divine.

*This happens to me as well when I prepare these. Maybe the people around me are just mad for cookie dough.