Best Chewy M&M Cookies | Recipe (2024)

An easy recipe for the best, homemade M&M cookies made with real, unsalted butter, and no shortening. Simple to make and kid-friendly, this is the perfect holiday cookie!

SWAPPING CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES FOR M&M COOKIES

If you think you can take your prized chocolate chip cookie recipe and simply replace the semi-sweet chocolate chips with M&M's....think again. Replacing the chocolate chips with M&M's had a greater impact on the cookie than one might expect.

You'd soon find out the base of the cookie would be one note -- and that note is sweet. Really sweet.

M&M'S VS. CHOCOLATE CHIPS

When you think about it, the overt sweetness actually makes sense. M&M's are made with milk chocolate, not to mention that whole candy shell thing, and chocolate chip cookies call for semi-sweet chocolate chips.

The bitterness from the semi-sweet chips helps to balance the sweetness in the cookie base, so reducing the sugar for the M&M cookies made sense, and makes for a perfectly balanced cookie.

HOW TO MAKE M&M COOKIES

M&M cookies have all the same elements as a chocolate chip cookie, minus the chocolate chips (actually, if you wanted to throw in a few semi-sweet chocolate chips, you could totally get away with that), and they are made using an identical method.

WHISK DRY INGREDIENTS TO COMBINE

To make the M&M cookies, you first mix your dry ingredients: Flour, baking powder, and salt. A whisk is all you need to mix the dry ingredients. Then, you'll move on to your wet ingredients: Butter, granulated and brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract.

MIX WET INGREDIENTS WITH CARE

If you want a picture-perfect, chewy M&M cookie, you'll need to pull in some equipment right about now. Either a handheld mixer or a stand mixer will do. To help get some air in those cookies, we'll beat the butter and the sugars together on medium-high speed for no less than two minutes.

After the sugar and butter mixture is all light and fluffy, scrape down the bowl, mix once more, and the eggs go in. One. At. A. Time. Mixing well in between each addition. The whole "scraping down the bowl" and "eggs one at a time" thing is actually kind of important. It's what ensures the cookie batter is evenly mixed. Properly mixed wet ingredients are like insurance against random spreading and burning when baking.

Then the vanilla extract goes in, and the wet ingredients are mixed once more.

DON'T OVERMIX WHEN ADDING THE DRY INGREDIENTS

Once the wet ingredients are evenly incorporated, the dry ingredients are mixed in on low, just until dry flour is no longer visible. And, finally, the time has come -- M&M time, that is. A hefty serving of M&M's go into the batter and it's time to bake.

CRACKS IN THE M&M'S

Cracks -- my arch nemesis. I baked these cookies at all different sizes, temperatures, and times, and there was one common denominator between all the batches -- the cookies with M&Ms exposed on the surface had cracks in the candy.

If you aren't an O.C.D. perfectionist type personality, you should be totally fine here. However, if you don't like the look of cracked M&M's, try one of these other desserts, cause honey, there is no getting around those cracks.

5 MORE COOKIE RECIPES TO TRY

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• Egg Hunt Blondies is acute Easter dessert recipe featuring the best, chewy blondies topped with buttercream icing and M&M candies. Plus, an easy trick to make the frosting look like grass for an Easter egg hunt topping!
• Strawberry Cake Cookies feature homemade cookies made with real strawberries. Plus, an optional lemon glaze to go on top for an extra special touch!
• Chocolate Sandwich Cookies with Raspberry Filling are seriously decadent! Featuring a creamy raspberry filling sandwiched between two homemade chocolate wafers.