.ooey gooey.

as of late, i'd been using my lunch bunch at work as my taste testing group for my baked goods. with the end of the school year approaching, i felt compelled to send the gang out with something delectable to celebrate the beginning of our approaching summer break. with a little searching, i ran across this popular paula deen recipe for chocolate gooey butter cookies.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/chocolate-gooey-butter-cookies-recipe/index.html

i'll admit, the 'gooey' intrigued me. instead of your normal cookie with bite, this one traded in the crunch factor for more of a cakey consistency. after reading lots of reviews on the recipe, i decided to go for it. one of my main hesitations was that this homemade recipe called for a box of chocolate cake mix as one of the ingredients. what?! cheating?? hmm...well, paula deen told me to.

being that the name of the cookie has butter in the title, it is no surprise that it is one of the main ingredients. then again, most of my grocery trips these days wind up with a box of butter in my cart. my pants like to remind me of that fact too. sigh.

after whipping up all the ingredients, the batter sat in the fridge for two hours to firm. once i got to work rolling the mix into balls, i could easily see another reason why they were named gooey. plopped on the cookie sheet, they set to baking. after the first batch came out, i took a taste and was utterly unimpressed. immediately rushing to my husband for a second opinion, he said they were good. well, 'good' wasn't good enough for me. needing to jazz these cookies up, i folded in some walnuts, sprinkled in some more brown sugar and then baked the rest of the batches this way.

i was excited to taste the new and improved gooeyness and again, took a bite almost as soon as they came out. and again, unimpressed. maybe i needed to let them cool off completely, along with my disappointment. the next morning, i went to work with a tub full of these cookies to share and they looked quite tasty. i snuck a bite of one with my fingers crossed as soon as i got to work. unfortunately, they just weren't doing it for me.

not one to waste, i took them to lunch and passed them out with a sour puss disclaimer that i didn't think they were that good. all the ladies were happy to eat one and even seconds. i took it as a good sign that some even helped themselves to thirds and sixths (not naming any names). i know some things are just a matter of taste, but i figure cookies should be a universal yumm.

maybe don't take my word for it because lots of other people liked the cake-like cookie. but me, i thought they tasted more ooey than gooey.