Chocolate chip cookies filled with peppermint bark!

Yes, I baked two days in a row. And yes, I am baking tomorrow night as well, which means it'll be three days in a row. I may have a slight addiction to baking. The baking aisle is the first place I seek out when I step foot into a store. I think about recipe ideas while I'm working out at the gym. I feel weird if I go a week without baking. Is there a Bakers Anonymous? Admitting it is the first step to recovery, right?
Today's recipe is a little simpler than the recent creations - back to the basics with a chocolate chip cookie as my base. To mix it up a little (because I always have to do that), I decided to add a peppermint bark candy in the middle of each cookie. I had about half a bag of Hershey's Peppermint Bark Bells leftover from my gingerbread present boxes, so I used those.

For the chocolate chip cookie, I used my favorite recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction, which I raved about already in a previous post. To summarize - the cookie turns out soft and tasty and basically perfect. It's also pretty versatile, allowing you to add all sorts of different flavors in there.

To make these, I simply wrapped a ball of the cookie dough around a peppermint bark candy .

It came out all nice and melted and gooey, just the way I wanted it to:

I kept going until I used up all my peppermint bark candy.I had about a dozen and half of cookies at this point, but I had more dough leftover. So I rolled these up to make regular chocolate chip cookies. One of the secrets to getting nice and thick cookies is to roll the dough taller than it is wide, so it doesn't completely spread out during baking.

Now, I have two variety of cookies to offer people! I made a makeshift divider out of tinfoil so I could keep the two cookie types separate in my cookie traveling case (yes, I have a cookie traveling case).

Tune in tomorrow for my last installment in this week's baking trilogy!

Peppermint Bark Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes ~28 cookies)
Ingredients: 

• 3/4 cup of butter (unsalted, at room temperature)
• 3/4 cup of dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup of white sugar
• 1 egg + 1 extra egg yolk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 and 1/4 cup flour (all-purpose)
• 1 cup of milk chocolate chips
• 1 bag of Hershey's Peppermint Bark Bells

Steps: 

1. Mix butter and sugars together with hand mixer until creamed. (This and all following mixing steps are done in a stand mixer at the lowest speed). 
2. Mix in egg and egg yolk, followed by vanilla. 
3. Mix dry ingredients (baking soda, salt, flour) together, separate from the wet mixture. Mix half of the dry mixture with the wet until combined, followed by the other half of the dry mixture. 
4. Stir the chocolate chips. 
5. Chill dough for at least 2 hours, so it's firm enough to handle. 
6. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
7. Form balls (~1 tablespoon). Take one peppermint bell candy and cover it completely with a cookie dough ball. Alternatively, you can leave out the candy and just make regular chocolate chip cookies - just roll the cookie taller than it is wider to get a thick cookie (see picture above). 
8. Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes. 
9.  Pull from the oven and let cool for 2 minutes in the pan, and then transfer to another plate to cool. 
10. Enjoy!