This warm chocolate chip skillet cookie with a hint of bourbon is the best ending to a cozy family meal!

If you know me, you know I don’t make fancy desserts. I don’t do meringues, or snows, or separating eggs. I don’t work with fancy fondants or construct cream cakes. I don’t care for fancy mousses or some petit fours I can’t even pronounce. I have friends who will spend hours, even days, preparing desserts for Shabbos and Yom Tov. I am in awe of them but I love my simple, easy recipes that I know my guests and family will love.

To me, a good dessert is a yummy cookie or cake. Something that’s made with one bowl and no mixer. And I have a special weakness for chocolate chip cookies. Every single Friday night, regardless of what else I end up serving, I always put out chocolate chip cookies. Even when I go out to eat and I order dessert, I like to get a hot chocolate chip cookie with a scoop of ice cream. See the theme over here? So if I am going to make a real dessert, it’s going to have my favorite components!

This skillet cookie is a real winner. It’s like a chocolate chip cookie…but even better! It’s super easy and you can make it in advance and freeze it. You bake it directly in a cast-iron skillet and warm it up and serve it straight out of the skillet. (It’s delicious on Yom Tov with vanilla ice cream.) You can also serve it room temp as a fun jumbo cookie. If you’re serving it warm, it’s extra good if you underbake it a drop (which my family loves), so it’s all gooey on the inside.

There’s something so warm and cozy about sharing a one-dish dessert at the end of a small family meal and I love the rustic look of bringing a warm skillet directly to the table. I bought my skillet at Home Goods, but this cast iron skillet is similar to what I have. My kids went crazy over this — my boys had a mini sparring match as they tried to knock each other’s spoons out of the skillet in an attempt to get the best scoop.

Note that a skillet does not serve a huge crowd. If you’re hosting more people, you can double the recipe and either make it in a 9×13 oven-to-table dish or use two skillets. If I’m serving an especially large crowd (like on Sukkos, I tend to have a lot of people at my table), I will quadruple this recipe and make it in two 9×13 pans and scoop it out onto plates with vanilla ice cream. Yes, your guests lose the fun of scooping their dessert directly from the skillet, but the taste and flavor are certainly there.

You can play around with the recipe. Don’t want to use bourbon? Swap it for chocolate liquor, or even vanilla extract if you want to stay away from alcohol. If you don’t have mini chocolate chips, you can use regular chips, or chopped chocolate, or even have some fun and use any of the different flavored chips that are available.