Soft Baked M&M Cookies

What You’ll Need

Nothing fancy needed here, folks. Just some staple kitchen ingredients and your favorite colorful candy. Here’s a shopping list for you. Check out the recipe card below for precise measurements.

• All-purpose flour – I always recommend a food scale, to be sure you measure it accurately. Particularly with cookies, they will dry out quickly if you add too much flour.
• Cornstarch – The cornstarch replaces some flour to keep the cookies from spreading too much, while also not drying out from using more flour to achieve the same thing.
• Baking soda and baking powder – A combination of both gives you the perfect cookie texture.
• Salt – Salt enhances the flavors already present in the cookie to add more flavor.
• Unsalted butter – The butter should be at room temperature. If it’s too cold, it won’t cream properly with the sugars.
• Packed light brown sugar and granulated sugar – The use of brown sugar in addition to granulated sugar contributes additional moisture to the cookies as well as a deeper flavor.
• Eggs – Be sure to use large eggs, not medium or extra large.
• Vanilla extract
• M&Ms and chocolate chips – I went with semi-sweet chocolate chips, but feel free to use milk chocolate chips or another mix-in of your choosing.

• Form into cookies. Form the dough into balls about 4 tablespoons in size and arrange on the prepared baking sheet with a couple of inches between them. Use your fingers to make them round if you’d like.
• Bake. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
• Cool. Cool at room temperature for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Recipe Tips

It’s hard to get this M&M cookie recipe wrong, but I do have some little gems of wisdom that will help you ace them the first time around. Here they come:

• Measure carefully. Especially when it comes to the flour. If you add too much flour, your cookie will be dry and crumbly. Too little, and they will spread too much. Have a look at my post on How to Measure Flour Correctly for more information.
• Don’t skimp on creaming time. Creaming together the butter and sugars incorporates air into the dough. This helps give the cookies loft and structure. So beat that butter and sugar until the mixture has significantly lightened in color and become fluffy.
• Don’t over-mix. Over-mixing (once the wet and dry ingredients have been combined) can cause the glutens in the flour to overdevelop. This will leave you with tough, overly dense cookies. Mix only until the ingredients have fully come together. No more.
• Leave space between the cookies. Although these cookies don’t spread a ton, they do spread a bit. So leave some space between your dough balls.
• Don’t over-bake. Remember that there can be a lot of variation between how ovens bake, so keep an eye on the cookies to make sure they don’t overbake. You’ll know they’re done when the centers look soft and the edges are ever so slightly golden.