Not so “natural”, but oh well.

• cake mix, any flavor
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• nuts, chocolate chips, whatever else you want in them
• frosting or colored sugar if desired

Stir it all together. You now have a stiff dough, which can be used for making a variety of cookies. Some I have tried:

1. Valentine cookies: use strawberry cake mix, form teaspoon-sized balls. Roll some in coarse pink sugar and leave some plain. After they’ve cooled, frost the plain ones with white frosting and sprinkle with red sugar.
2. Christmas cookies: use chocolate cake mix. Press small balls of dough into mini muffin wells. When the edges are set, take them out of the oven and press red- and green-swirled chips into their centers. Let them cool before taking them out of the pan.
3. PMS chocolate chocolate chip: use a chocolate cake mix (the kind with pudding!) and stir in 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips. Try not to eat all the dough before you bake them.

Unless otherwise noted, bake them on an ungreased, shiny cookie sheet for 10-14 minutes at 350 degrees. I like these cookies because I almost always have the ingredients on hand, thanks to 10/$10 sales on mixes at the grocery store, and it lets me focus my cookie-making energy on making them look impressive, instead of just in the forming of the dough. (It takes me about six times to read each step of a recipe before I get it right. Even then there’s no guarantee, and by the time I get to the creative part I am exhausted.)