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part.” Aunt Nancy turned to Hannah. “Everyone at the Food Channel knows you’re getting married right after the competition. And by the time you arrive in New York, the judges will know it, too. That’s why I think you should bake a wedding cake for the cake challenge. And you should present it to the judges wearing your wedding veil. Allen will really appreciate that, and I can almost guarantee that he’ll give you a perfect score so that you can win that challenge too!”
     

CHIPS GALORE
WHIPPERSNAPPER COOKIES
 
DO NOT preheat your oven quite yet—this cookie dough needs to chill before baking.
     
1 box (approximately 18 ounces) yellow cake mix, the kind that makes a 9-inch by 3-inch cake (I used Duncan Hines—18.5 ounces net weight)
1 large egg, beaten (just whip it up in a glass with a fork)
2 cups of Original Cool Whip, thawed (measure this—a tub of Cool Whip contains a little over 3 cups and that’s too much!)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup assorted chips, chopped into little pieces (regular chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, or whatever you have left over from other cookies you’ve baked)
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½ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (you don’t have to sift it unless it’s got big lumps)
     
Pour HALF of the dry cake mix into a large bowl.
Use a smaller bowl to mix the two cups of Cool Whip with the beaten egg and the vanilla extract. Stir gently with a rubber spatula until everything is combined.
Add the Cool Whip mixture to the cake mix in the large bowl. STIR VERY CAREFULLY with a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir only until everything is combined. You don’t want to stir all the air from the Cool Whip.
Sprinkle the rest of the cake mix on top and gently fold it in with the rubber spatula. Again, keep as much air in the batter as possible. Air is what will make your cookies soft and have that melt-in-your-mouth quality.
Sprinkle the cup of chopped, mixed-flavor chips on top and gently fold the chips into the airy cookie mixture. (You can easily chop the chips in a food processor by using the steel blade and processing them in an on-and-off motion.)
Cover the bowl and chill this mixture for at least one hour in the refrigerator. It’s a little too sticky to form into balls without chilling it first.
Hannah’s 1 st Note: Andrea sometimes mixes whippersnapper dough up before she goes to bed on Friday night and bakes her cookies with Tracey in the morning.
Hannah’s 2 nd Note: If you see our mother, please don’t mention that I told you Andrea always gives Bethie a warm whippersnapper cookie for breakfast on Saturday mornings.
When your cookie dough has chilled and you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F., and make sure the rack is in the middle position. DO NOT take your chilled cookie dough out of the refrigerator until after your oven has reached the proper temperature.
While your oven is preheating, prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam or another nonstick baking spray, or lining them with parchment paper.
Place the confectioner’s sugar in a small, shallow bowl. You will be dropping cookie dough into this bowl to form dough balls and coating them with the powdered sugar.
When your oven is ready, take your dough out of the refrigerator. Using a teaspoon from your silverware drawer, drop the dough by rounded teaspoonful into the bowl with the powdered sugar. Roll the dough around with your fingers to form powdered-sugar-coated cookie dough balls.
Andrea’s 1 st Note: This is easiest if you coat your fingers with powdered sugar first and then try to form the cookie dough into balls.
Place the coated cookie dough balls on your prepared cookie sheets, no more than 12 cookies on a standard-size sheet.
Hannah’s 3 rd Note: I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Work with only one cookie dough ball at a time. If you drop more than one in the bowl of powdered sugar, they’ll stick together.
Andrea’s 2 nd