This Is The Best-Ever Dinner Party Dessert

You may assume that since we are self-professed food lovers, our favorite dinner party dessert would be a perfectly caramelized crème brûlée; an elegant, individual-sized raspberry tart; or a perfectly risen, symmetrical dark chocolate soufflé. But in fact, our most loved desserts aren't the intricate, complex, sophisticated ones — they're the family-friendly, comforting, easy-to-prepare dishes, such as fruit cobblers, chocolate brownies, or ice cream covered in hot fudge sauce.

We recently discovered what has turned out to be our all-time favorite dinner party dessert, which trumps everything that's ever come before: The giant ooey-gooey chocolate chip skillet cookie.

There are so many reasons why a giant skillet cookie is the ultimate dinner party dessert. First, it's delicious. Who could ever resist a still-warm-from-the-oven, gooey-in-the-middle, buttery cookie filled with molten chocolate chips? Second, desserts are always best when they're meant to be shared. Rather than handing out portions of dessert, simply place this skillet cookie in the center of the table, hand everyone a spoon, and let all your guests just dig in.

This skillet cookie is also the perfect base for adding multiple scoops of ice cream. As soon as the cookie is out the oven, pile ice cream on top and watch it slowly melt into and around the cookie. The molten, sticky, hot and cold ice cream and cookie combination makes this dessert even better than you could possibly imagine.

Finally, this is the least fussy dessert ever. It's messy, it's super easy to make, and it appeals to our most basic, child-like tastes. And that's what exactly what we're looking for in dessert: Fun, sweetness, happiness, and a desire to eat as much of it as is possible.

So don't mess around making puff pastry by hand and caramelizing seasonal fruit at your next dinner party. Instead, follow this incredibly basic cookie recipe to bake the most popular dessert you've ever served.