The gratitude on my husband’s face when I brought a small tin of these Chocolate Chip Rugelach up to his office this week was all the validation I needed. They’re among his favorite cookies and this was the first time I’d ever made them. The recipe is a little bit different from many I’ve seen – it uses a prepared chocolate filling rather than nuts, jam or other traditional fillings – but the end result was delightful nonetheless. With tonight being the first night of Hanukkah, I thought I’d share the recipe with you.

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The Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe may be the most well-known of the on-the-package cookie recipes out there, but it’s by no means the only one. It comes as no surprise that all of the chocolate chip companies feature recipes, but have you ever seen what the butter people have come up with?

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The folks at King Arthur Flour call these their “Best Fudge Brownies Ever”. Pretty big talk, don’t you think? As one who enjoys a good brownie I was definitely game to bake up a batch and see for myself. Did they live up to all the hype?

Well, that depends on how you like your brownies.

If you think brownies ought to be rich and chocolatey, dense and chewy… if a shiny, crackly surface that begs to be broken through with a deftly-wielded serrated knife (or just your eager mitts) is at all inviting to you… if the sight and feel of soft, melted pockets of semi-sweet chocolate cropping up intermittently like decadent little presents makes you stop whatever you’re doing to sit down and savor the goodness …and if, from a highly practical standpoint, you value the ability to remove all of this wonderfulness quickly and easily from its baking pan without any sticking at all…then YES, you will conclude, as I did, that these are, in fact, the BEST FUDGE BROWNIES EVER!

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These days we food-types like to jazz up our chocolate chip cookes with bacon, Jacques Torres disks and sea salt. Those are tasty variations, but I don’t know anyone who would dare pass up a big plate of the good ol’ Toll House original. It’s a true American icon. The Nestlé company licensed the recipe from the cookie’s inventor, Ruth Wakefield, and has printed it on bags of its Toll House morsels for decades. We don’t often look to the side of a food package for culinary greatness, but isn’t it interesting that it’s where many tried and true recipes actually came from?

Until recently I had all but completely ignored these on-the-package recipes. Why? Rarely does a photo accompany them and with the two inches of space most are allotted the directions tend to be scant. In other words, I couldn’t easily tell what I was getting myself into. One day recently I decided that it would be a fun project to take the leap and start “revealing” some of these recipes on a blog. Some, like the Toll House cookies, might be hidden gems. Others might be…well…better left on the package. Either way, on-the-package recipes will finally get the spotlight! I hope you’ll follow me on this adventure and subscribe to my updates.

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