Cooking Connection is a Journal-World feature that prints favorite reader recipes. This week’s featured cook is Mallory Richardson, of Lawrence, with her chocolate chip pudding cookies.

About the recipe: In the ninth grade, I joined the cross country team at Free State High School. The evening before each meet, the entire team would get together for a spaghetti dinner at the home of a senior runner. Freshmen were assigned to bring dessert. I decided that we should make my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. The next thing I knew, not only was everyone trying the cookies and talking about how great they were, everyone was asking who made them. And so they became known simply as “Mallory Cookies,” and the tradition began. I continued bringing my cookies for the remainder of my freshman season, and the tradition did not stop in the three years that followed.

After I graduated from Free State, my recipe was never passed on, and within a couple of years, desserts were banned from the spaghetti dinners. But on rare occasions, my younger sister will sneak an orange Tupperware container into the locker room, and the older girls will scream with delight and enjoy their “Mallory Cookies” in secrecy.

Recipe

• 2 1/4 cups unsifted flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup butter or margarine, softened (use Smart Balance for a more healthful version without trans fat)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 package (4 ounces) vanilla instant pudding (crucial ingredient for soft, chewy cookies)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 package (12 ounces) chocolate chips

Combine butter, the sugars, pudding mix and vanilla in a large bowl and beat until smooth and creamy. Beat in eggs. Mix flour with baking soda and then gradually add in. Stir in chocolate chips. (Batter will be stiff.) Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes.

Do you have a recipe you’re known for, or one that means something special to you? Send it to Terry Rombeck at trombeck@ljworld.com or 645 N.H., Lawrence, 66044.