Trail Mix Cookies

Trail Mix Cookies? That's right. I went there. My husband's grandma D gave us some munchies for the car ride home, this included a big bag of trail mix. It was a pretty good mix in my opinion. It included raisins (both colors), cashews, peanuts, and M&Ms. Now, last night for whatever reason I blurted out to my husband something about how I could probably use the trail mix for cookies. I don't think he really paid much attention but I did just that today. I followed the same recipe I use the other day for my chocolate chip cookies but swapped out the mini chocolate chips for the trail mix. I also spiced up the trail mix by adding some sliced almonds we've had sitting in the cabinet for way too long, some extra raisins and a big handful of oats. I keep trying to figure out with more creative ideas on how to get rid of all the baking supplies piled up in the kitchen but so far, I just keep coming up with cookies. My guess as to why cookies, well, they're fairly easy to whip up and they're really easy to throw in a bag and send to work that day with my husband to pawn off to his friends. Yesterday the entire batch of muffins and half the batch of pretzel cookies got sent to the barracks. While I'm totally okay feeding the hungry little sharks at the barracks, I'm also hoping they're appreciating every sugary homemade bite they eat. With this said, let me go on to give all the specifics on these bad boys.

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup trail mix (you could use prepackaged or throw together just a few of your favorite mix ingredients)

Directions:
Cream together butter and sugars. Add egg and vanilla. Whisk together dry ingredients (except trail mix). Slowly add flour mixture to sugar mixture. Once combined, fold in trail mix with a plastic spatula. I used a cookie dropper for these. The first batch I just dropped but they didn't look perfect enough for me so the next batch I used the scoop, rolled the ball of dough in my hands and then flattened the top of the ball slightly with my fingers. The second batch came out pretty perfect looking, but hey, whatever floats your boat blogaroos! Bake at 350F for 6-8 minutes. Allow cookies to set on baking sheet (about 2 minutes) before placing on a cooling rack to finish cooling.