Chewy Chocolate Chip Thank You Cookies

Tomorrow I am off to Australia for a couple weeks. Here you can go ahead and picture me doing a little happy dance...

I am very excited to see my brothers, and family, and old friends, and to have a nice little vacation to celebrate finishing my Master's (my last class is today!).

Of course, baking ties into this somewhere, and I know you were on the edge of your seat waiting to find out how...
A friend of mine is coming over to take care of the house and cats, and I thought he might enjoy some fresh homemade cookies as a small token of thanks. I found these ones on Pinterest, and adapted them to my liking (and based on the fact that I discovered that I - shock, horror! - only had about a cup of chocolate chips left in the pantry. Don't worry, they've been added to the grocery list for when I get back).

They ended up deliciously soft and chewy, and choc-full (pun intended) of chocolatey, nutty, M&M goodness.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Thank You Cookies
Source: The Girl Who Ate Everything
Makes about 2 dozen 3-3.5 inch cookies

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (I used 1 cup semisweet chips, and 1 cup m&ms)
optional: about 1/3-1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 325°F.
Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
In the bowl of your mixer with a paddle attachment, cream together melted butter and brown and white sugar until well blended.

Beat in the vanilla, the egg, and the egg yolk. Continue beating until light and creamy.

Mix in the dry ingredients until just combined.

Separate the dough into halves.
Mix chocolate chips into half the dough with a wooden spoon. Mix the m&ms into the other half of the dough. If you are adding the nuts, separate the chocolate chip mixture in half again. Mix nuts into one of these halves.
So, now you've got m&ms...

chocolate chips with nuts...

and chocolate chips without nuts.

Roll the dough into balls about the size of large walnuts (in the shell) and place on a baking stone or a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Really you can make these any size you want, you will just need to adjust baking time accordingly.

Bake for 20-22 minutes (yes, mine really took that long! Be careful to check your cookies throughout, all ovens bake differently, and I made mine pretty big), or until edges start to look golden brown.

Cool on a wire rack, and then try not to eat the entire batch at once.

Enjoy!