Frozen Cookie Dough Balls

Everyone has a chocolate chip cookie recipe, BUT I swear this one is the best! They're Mrs. Bowden's Chocolate Chip Cookies and they are mmmm mmmm good. Mrs. Bowden was my 6th grade English teacher and she would use cookies to bribe us in class, and it worked! When we graduated from high school she invited us all back for a party, a small reunion of sorts. She baked us cookies, showed us pictures of ourselves as awkward little 6th graders and sent us home with the recipe to make the cookies ourselves. Ever since then this had been my go to cookie recipe. 

Mrs. Bowden's Chocolate Chip Cookies

3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup shortening
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 - 1 cup oatmeal
1 bag chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix sugars, shortening and vanilla. Add eggs and blend. In a separate bowl combine salt, baking soda, flour and oatmeal. Slowly add dry mixture to wet mixture and mix thoroughly. Stir in chocolate chips. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 9 - 11 minutes.

So this is my system when I make cookies lately.

1) Gather the ingredients.
2) Mix up the stuff according to the recipe.
3) Make the dough balls, BUT instead of cooking them all, I prep one cookie sheet for the oven and the other for the freezer.  

4) While the cookies are baking, I put the rest of the dough balls in the freezer so they can harden.

5) When the cookies are done baking I put them on a rack to cool, then I put the dough balls in a zip block bag and return them to the freezer...and of course I sit down and eat a cookie (or two or three)!

I love this system because 1) I don't chow down on an entire batch of cookies in a day and a half, 2) I have cookie dough all ready to go, so if I want to cook up just a few cookies it's super easy and 3) cookie dough is mighty good to snack on (although you probably shouldn't do that because there are raw eggs...but still).   

The other idea I just got from Pinterest: package the dough balls up nice and pretty and give them as a gift. Genius!