Saturday afternoon cookies

In a few hours, I'm headed down to Old Town for an afternoon of Trivia with my Colgate Chicago Alumni group.  Since I rarely like to go to a party empty handed, and I haven't had much of an opportunity to bake recently, I decided to bake some cookies to bring with me.  Actually, I have baked so rarely recently that I didn't even realize I had only 1/2 stick of butter in the refrigerator, with no back-up in the freezer.  Unprecedented!

So the cookies I chose for this afternoon are potato chip cookies, from an old issue of Real Simple Magazine.  You may remember that I made these cookies last Halloween for the kids in my building.  I found them to be crumbly, so today I tweaked the recipe a bit and am pretty happy with the results so far.  They're still a bit crumbly, so I may try some more egg next time, but for now, here's the new recipe:

1 cup butter at room temp.  (the original recipe calls for unsalted, but I'm a salty gal . . . )
1/2 cup granulated sugar (extra, if you want to dust the cookies with it)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup potato chips, crushed (extra, if you want to dust the cookies with it)
1/2 cup pecans, chopped

Heat oven to 375.  Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer on high speed.  Then add vanilla on medium speed.  Add the egg, flour and cinnamon.  Beat on low/medium speed until incorporated, then fold in potato chips and pecans.  Form into 1 inch balls, then dip in either sugar or more potato chips (today I used potato chips, because I'm taking them to a bar, so I want them to be saltier than sweet).  Place on parchment 2 inches apart and press with a flat-bottomed glass.  Bake until the edges are a little golden brown, 13-14 minutes, depending on your baking sheets.  Let cool on sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks.  Yield: about 3 dozen.

Thanks to Real Simple for the original recipe, which I have loved enough to want to try to make it better :-)