Chocolate chip pretzel cookies

This is a blog hosted by librarians. As such, it's amazing that we've gotten this far without a book recommendation.Well, we're going to keep that streak going because today I have a book anti-recommendation. Namely, the worst mystery series I've ever encountered: Murder She Baked. These books are bad in every way a book can be bad (and I should know, I've read about 10 so far). Their saving grace, however is the recipes. Yes, recipes. The detective in the mysteries owns a bakery, so almost every chapter there is a recipe.We tested out chocolate chip pretzel cookies from Plum Pudding Murder because: (1) Ben loves chocolate chip cookies and requests that I make them at least once a week; (2) I'm sick of making and eating plain old chocolate chip cookies (see #1); and (3) we happened to have pretzels on hand.

everybody likes these, even Fred

Chocolate chip pretzel cookies

1 cup butter, softened (that's two sticks)
2 cups white sugar
3 Tablespoons molasses*
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
2 cups crushed pretzels (measure after crushing; to crush, put in ziplock bag and roll with rolling pin)
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (1/2 less than a whole bag)

*If you don't have molasses, you can substitute brown sugar for white. The math doesn't come out exactly right, but I'd assume that it would be fine. Actually, the math does work if you substitute half light brown sugar and half dark brown sugar, but if you're the type of person who has two kinds of brown sugar on hand you probably already own molasses.

Cream together butter, sugar, and molasses. Combine the rest of the ingredients. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Let your cookies rest on the pan for a couple minutes before moving to a cooling rack so they don't fall apart when you transfer. (I've tended to ignore that last step in the past, but I've discovered that it really does help.)