Confetti Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies earn the “confetti” name honestly. Three types of chocolate go into every batch: semi-sweet chunks, white chocolate baking pieces, and milk chocolate chips. Add a handful of coarsely cut walnuts and each cookie becomes a treasure hunt of flavors and textures.

Brown sugar and butter-flavored shortening give these a chewy, dense center without the spread you get from all-butter doughs. A full tablespoon of vanilla rounds out the sweetness and keeps the chocolate flavors from competing with each other.

The recipe’s built-in trick is pulling them from the oven when they still look slightly underdone. They’ll firm up during the two-minute rest on the hot baking sheet. Overbaking is the one thing that can wreck an otherwise loaded cookie like this.

Pro Tips

• Space dough mounds a full 3 inches apart. These are big cookies (2 tablespoons each) and they spread.
• The cookies should look moist and slightly puffy when you pull them. Carry-over heat finishes the job.
• Use block chocolate cut into rough chunks rather than uniform chips for that bakery-style look with uneven pockets of melted chocolate.
• Let the baking sheet cool completely between batches so the next round doesn’t start melting on a hot pan.

Variations

• Nut swap: Pecans or macadamia nuts work beautifully in place of walnuts.
• Salted version: Press a few flakes of Maldon sea salt onto each cookie right after baking while the chocolate is still gooey.
• Peanut butter twist: Replace half the shortening with creamy peanut butter for a nutty, richer dough.