Mini M&M's and Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe with a Secret Ingredient

These cookies came out of a rainy afternoon in Iowa with a specific craving: something chewy, chocolate-forward, and worth actually making from scratch. The secret ingredient is a half cup of vanilla instant pudding mix stirred right into the dough.

It sounds odd, but it’s the reason these cookies bake up soft and chewy in the middle without going cakey or dry — the texture holds up for days, not just fresh from the oven.

Mini M&M’s and mini chocolate chips go in together, which means you get chocolate in nearly every bite without the mix-ins overwhelming the dough. The recipe makes 45 good-sized cookies, which is either a lot or barely enough depending on how your household operates.

What Makes This Treat So Good

• Pudding mix in the dough — vanilla instant pudding adds cornstarch and extra sugar to the dough, which traps moisture and keeps the cookies soft and chewy for 3–4 days, not just the first hour out of the oven
• Two kinds of chocolate — mini chips melt into the dough so you get chocolate in every bite, while mini M&M’s hold their shape and add a slight crunch from the candy shell
• Equal parts white and brown sugar — the brown sugar brings moisture and a mild caramel undertone; white sugar helps the edges set and get just slightly crisp
• Butter, not shortening — real butter gives you better flavor. Shortening makes cookies hold their shape better, but it’s not worth the flavor trade-off here
• Parchment paper on the pan — this is the one step worth not skipping. It keeps the bottoms light and prevents any sticking, and cleanup takes about ten seconds
• Cooling on a rack — the cookies look slightly underdone when they come out of the oven. Moving them to a rack immediately lets air circulate underneath and they finish setting as they cool. Leave them on the hot pan and they’ll overcook from the bottom up

What to Know Before You Start

This dough is a full batch — it makes 45 cookies, and that’s not a typo. If you want fewer, you can halve the recipe, but honestly the cookies freeze well (either the dough balls or the baked cookies) so making the full batch and freezing half is worth it.

Cookie dough balls on a sheet pan, freeze until solid, then move to a zip bag — bake from frozen at 350°F for about 18 minutes.

Softened butter matters here. Not melted, not cold from the fridge — softened, meaning it holds its shape but gives when you press it.

If you forget to pull butter ahead of time, cut it into tablespoon-sized pieces and let it sit at room temp for 20–30 minutes. Melted butter will make the cookies spread too much and go flat.

One honest caution: don’t overbake these. Fifteen minutes at 350°F and they will look like they’re not done yet — pale on top, slightly soft in the center.

That’s correct. Pull them out and let the rack do the rest of the work.

Waiting until they look golden on top means you’ve gone about 2 minutes too far and the chewy texture you’re after won’t be there.

Ingredients

Here’s what you need for a full batch of 45 cookies:

• 1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks) — salted or unsalted both work. If you use salted, reduce the added salt to ½ teaspoon
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar — light or dark; dark will give a slightly more pronounced molasses flavor
• 2 large eggs — room temperature if possible; they cream into the butter more evenly
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour — spooned into the measuring cup and leveled, not packed
• ½ cup vanilla instant pudding mix — about ⅔ of the larger 3.4 oz box. This is the secret ingredient. Don’t use cook-and-serve pudding and don’t skip it. Sugar-free pudding mix will also work if that’s what you have
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups mini chocolate chips — mini chips distribute better than standard-size in this dough
• 1 cup mini M&M’s — regular M&M’s can substitute but the mini ones spread more evenly through the dough

How to Make Mini M&M and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Preheat your oven to 350°F and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Get the racks set at the middle positions before you start — these bake better with even heat circulation.

Step 1: Cream the butter and sugars. In a large mixing bowl, beat the softened butter with both sugars on medium speed for about 2–3 minutes.

You’re looking for the mixture to go pale and slightly fluffy — it should look almost like frosting. A stand mixer makes this easy, but a hand mixer works fine too.

Step 2: Add eggs and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until combined.

Add the vanilla extract and mix until the whole thing looks smooth and uniform. Scrape down the sides of the bowl — butter has a way of hiding in the corners.

Step 3: Add the dry ingredients. Add the flour, pudding mix, baking soda, and salt.

Mix on low speed just until combined — you don’t want to see dry streaks, but you also don’t want to overmix. Once the flour disappears, stop.

Step 4: Fold in the chocolate. Add the mini chocolate chips and mini M&M’s and stir them in with a wooden spoon or spatula.

The dough at this point is thick — thick enough that you’ll feel it in your forearms. That’s normal.

Make sure the mix-ins are evenly distributed before you stop.

Step 5: Shape the dough. Roll the dough into 2-inch balls — about 2 tablespoons of dough each — and place them on the prepared baking sheets, about 2 inches apart.

A cookie scoop speeds this up considerably and keeps the sizes consistent, which means more even baking. You can also use a standard ice cream scoop if you want slightly larger cookies (just add 1–2 minutes to the bake time).

Step 6: Bake. Bake for 15 minutes.

The edges will look set and very lightly golden; the tops will still look underdone and slightly glossy. Pull them out.

Step 7: Cool on a rack. Move the cookies to a wire cooling rack immediately.

They’ll look fragile — they are. Use a thin spatula and work quickly.

As they cool over the next 10–15 minutes, they’ll firm up into the chewy texture you want. If you leave them on the hot pan, the bottoms keep cooking and you lose the texture.

That’s it. Budget about 30 minutes for mixing and shaping, and plan for two or three batches through the oven depending on how many pans you have.

You’ll end up with around 45 cookies — officially. Realistically, closer to 40 once you account for the ones that don’t make it to the cooling rack.

Helpful Tips

• Don’t skip the parchment. Greased pans work, but parchment gives you lighter-bottomed cookies and zero sticking. Reusable silicone baking mats also work well here.
• Chill the dough if it’s too sticky to roll. This dough is easier to work with at room temperature, but if your kitchen is warm and the dough is too soft to roll cleanly, 20–30 minutes in the refrigerator will firm it back up.
• Press a few extra M&M’s on top before baking if you want the cookies to look more photogenic. The M&M’s inside the dough tend to get buried.
• Rotate your pans halfway through baking if your oven has hot spots. Most ovens do. Front-to-back rotation makes a noticeable difference in evenness.
• Use a kitchen scale if you have one. Weighing the dough balls at about 35–40 grams each means every cookie bakes in the same amount of time and comes out the same size.
• Let the baking sheets cool between batches. Putting dough on a hot pan causes the butter to start melting before the cookies go in the oven, which leads to more spreading and thinner cookies.

Equipment Worth Having

You don’t need specialized equipment for this recipe, but two things genuinely make a difference:

• Wire cooling racks — these cookies need to come off the hot pan immediately. A rack that fits a full sheet of cookies at once saves a lot of back-and-forth. A stackable three-tier rack is useful if you’re baking multiple batches.
• A medium cookie scoop — consistent scoop size means consistent bake time across the whole batch. The kind with the spring-release mechanism is worth it over a regular spoon for 45 cookies.

Storage, Make-Ahead, and Freezing

Room temperature: Store baked cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. They stay chewy — the pudding mix does its job here.

Adding a slice of bread to the container is an old trick that works: the cookies pull moisture from the bread and stay soft longer.

Freezing baked cookies: Let cookies cool completely, then freeze in a single layer until solid (about 1 hour), then transfer to a zip freezer bag. They’ll keep for up to 3 months.

Thaw at room temperature for 30–60 minutes, or warm briefly in a 300°F oven for about 5 minutes.

Freezing dough balls: Scoop and roll the dough, freeze the balls on a parchment-lined pan until solid, then transfer to a freezer bag. Bake from frozen at 350°F for about 17–18 minutes.

No need to thaw first. This is genuinely the most practical thing you can do with this recipe — make the full batch, freeze half, and bake them on demand.

Refrigerating dough: Covered dough keeps in the fridge for up to 3 days. The cookies actually bake up slightly thicker from cold dough since the butter is firmer going in.

Some people prefer this and deliberately chill the dough overnight.

Variations

This is a very flexible base dough. A few variations that work well:

• Swap the pudding flavor. Chocolate fudge pudding mix instead of vanilla makes the dough itself chocolatey — a good move if you want a double-chocolate version. Cheesecake pudding is another option that gives a slightly tangier, richer flavor.
• Change the mix-ins. Peanut butter chips instead of (or in addition to) the chocolate chips work well here. White chocolate chips and macadamia nuts. Holiday M&M’s in seasonal colors for gift cookie tins. Butterscotch chips.
• Add a sprinkle of flaky salt. A pinch of flaky sea salt (Maldon or similar) on top of each dough ball before baking cuts through the sweetness and makes the chocolate flavor come forward more. This is an honest recommendation — it’s worth trying at least once.
• Make them smaller. Roll 1-tablespoon balls instead of 2-tablespoon, reduce bake time to 11–12 minutes, and you’ll get closer to 70–80 smaller cookies. Good for parties or cookie trays where you want variety.

FAQ

Can I use cook-and-serve pudding mix instead of instant?

It’s not recommended. Instant pudding mix and cook-and-serve pudding mix have different formulations — cook-and-serve requires heat to set properly, and in a cookie it won’t behave the same way.

The result is usually a different texture and sometimes a slightly gummy interior. Stick to instant pudding mix.

Can I use regular M&M’s instead of mini?

Yes, regular M&M’s work fine. The main difference is that they’re harder to distribute evenly through the dough — you’ll end up with some cookies that have three M&M’s and some that have one.

Mini M&M’s spread through the dough more uniformly. If regular M&M’s are what you have, use them.

You could also press a few on top of each dough ball right before baking to make sure they show up.

Why are my cookies coming out flat?

Three likely causes: butter that was too warm (melted or very soft), a hot baking sheet going into the oven, or flour that was packed into the measuring cup instead of spooned in. All three lead to more spreading.

Try chilling the shaped dough balls for 20 minutes before baking, make sure your pans are cooled between batches, and measure flour by spooning it lightly into the cup and leveling it off.

My cookies came out cakey instead of chewy. What happened?

Usually too much flour. If you scoop measuring cups directly into the flour bag, you pack in significantly more flour than the recipe intends — enough to change the texture from chewy to cakey.

Spoon flour into the cup and level it with a straight edge. Another possible cause: overbaking.

Chewy cookies need to come out while they still look slightly underdone.

Can I make this dough ahead of time?

Yes. The dough keeps covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

You can also freeze shaped dough balls and bake them directly from frozen — just add 2–3 minutes to the bake time. This is genuinely the most useful thing about this recipe: you can make the full batch of dough, bake what you need now, and freeze the rest to bake later.

Do I have to use parchment paper?

You don’t have to, but it makes a noticeable difference. Parchment keeps the bottoms from over-browning and makes cleanup easy.

Silicone baking mats are a good reusable alternative. If you use neither, grease the pan well and check the bottoms a few minutes before the timer goes off — bare metal pans conduct heat faster and the bottoms can go too dark before the tops are done.

Related Recipes

• Monster Cookies — oatmeal, M&M’s, peanut butter, chocolate chips, all in one cookie
• Soft Sugar Cookies — another recipe where the texture is the whole point
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars — same general flavor profile, baked as bars instead of individual cookies
• M&M Cookie Cake — for when you want the M&M cookie experience in a single large format
• No-Bake Cookies — when you want chocolate cookies without turning on the oven

Recipe adapted from The Baking Chocola Tess.