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

These cookies were inspired by the craving on a rainy afternoon in Iowa. From scratch baking cookies that are chocolatey and chewy and worth the effort to make while using a secret ingredient: a half cup of vanilla instant pudding mix mixed right into the dough. It might sound a bit strange, and I promise it’s worth it! These cookies stay nice and soft, with that chewy center, and will never come out cakey or dry. The texture even holds up for days after baking, other than being fresh out of the oven!

Mini M&M’s and mini chocolate chips combine to give you chocolate in almost every bite and not let the mix-ins be too much of the dough. This recipe makes 45 good size cookies, which depending on how your household works can be a lot or hardly enough.

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 and makes 45 cookies, and that is not a typo. If you don’t want that many, you can halve the recipe, but the cookies freeze really well (both the dough balls and the baked cookies), so it’s worth it to make the full batch and freeze half. To bake the dough balls from frozen, preheat to 350°F and bake for about 18 minutes.

Here it’s crucial that your butter is ‘softened’ and not ‘melted’ or ‘fridge cold.’ Softened butter is butter that gives a little when you push down on it, but still holds the overall structure. If you forget to take out the butter, you can cut it up into tablespoon-sized pieces. Leave it for 20-30 minutes at room temperature. Otherwise if the butter is melted it will cause the cookies to lose their structure and spread out too much.

Just a quick warning, there is a chance you could overbake these, so keep an eye out. At 350°F, these will bake in about 15 minutes, and will probably look underbaked — pale and soft in the center. That’s right, just take them out and the rack will take care of the rest. If you wait for them to look golden, you would have cooked them about 2 minutes too many, and that chewy texture you’re looking for is gone.

Ingredients

To make 45 cookies, you’ll need this:

• 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

Before you start mixing the dough, it’s a good idea to preheat your oven so it gets to the right temperature before it’s time to bake the cookies. Preheat your oven to 350°F and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Also, adjust your oven racks to the middle position as cookies bake better with even heat circulation.

Step 1: Butter and sugar mixture. In a large bowl, mix the softened butter and both sugars at a medium speed for about 2 to 3 minutes. The mixture should become light colored, slightly fluffy, and have a frosting-like texture. A stand mixer is the best, but a hand mixer will work too.

Step 2: Incorporate the eggs and the vanilla. For the eggs, do this one by one and make sure to mix after each addition until they are combined. Pour in the vanilla extract and mix until everything looks smooth and uniform. Take a spatula or a rubber scraper and push down the sides to make sure none of the butter is hiding in the corners.

Step 3: Put in the dry elements. Put in the pudding mixture, the flour, the baking soda, and the salt. Mix on low speed until blended. You should not overmix, but you also want to see the dry streaks. As soon as the flour is gone, stop.

Step 4: Fold in your chocolate. Take your mini chocolate chips and mini M&Ms and mix them in using a wooden spoon or spatula. By this time, the dough is thick, so thick that you’ll be able to feel it in your forearms….this is normal. Make sure your mix-ins are evenly distributed.

Step 5: Shape the dough. Roll your dough into balls about 2 inches wide. Each ball should be around 2 tablespoon’s worth of dough. Put your dough balls on the baking sheet, leaving a 2 inch gap between the balls. A cookie scoop makes this a lot easier and will give you uniform balls of dough, meaning they will all bake at the same rate. If you want bigger cookies, you can use a standard ice cream scoop, you’ll just need to increase the bake time by 1-2 minutes.

Step 6: Baking Bake for 15 minutes. The top will look slightly glossy and underdone while the edges will be slightly golden. When this happens, take them out.

Step 7: Let your cookies cool on a rack. Once they’re out of the oven, carefully transfer them to a wire rack to cool. They may look somewhat broken — and that’s not untrue. Work as fast as you can to scrape them off with a thin spatula. They will firm up to that chewy texture you want as they cool over the next 10 to 15 minutes. Leaving them on hot trays will cause the bottoms to overbake and you’ll lose that chewy texture.

Mixing and shaping should take about 30 minutes, and depending on the number of baking pans you have, you may need to do 2 or 3 rounds in the oven. You should get about 45 cookies, officially, but realistically, expect closer to 40 once you factor in the ones that will be eaten before they reach 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

While there’s no need for specialized tools for this recipe, two things do 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: When storing your baked cookies, seal them in an airtight container for 5 days. Thanks to the pudding mix, they will still remain chewy. Put a slice of bread in the container, and it will work like a charm. The cookies will absorb moisture from the bread and will remain soft for an extended period of time.

### How to Freeze Baked Cookies First, make sure the cookies are fully cool. Then, freeze them in a single layer for about one hour. After that, you can put them into a zip freezer bag. The cookies will stay good for about three months. When you are ready to eat the cookies, you can either defrost the cookies in a room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes or for a quick defrost, warm them in an oven for about 5 minutes at 300 degrees F.

To freeze dough balls, scoop and roll the dough into balls and freeze them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Once solid, remove the balls and place them in a freezer bag. To bake, cook the dough from frozen for about 17–18 minutes at 350°F. You won’t need to thaw the dough before baking. This is the best thing you can do with this recipe. You can make the entire batch, freeze half of them, and bake the dough balls as you please!

Refrigerating dough: Dough that is covered can be stored in the refrigerator for three days. Cookies made with cold dough actually bake thicker because the butter is colder when going into the oven. Some people like this effect and intentionally let the dough chill in the refrigerator overnight.

Variations

There are many possibilities with this base dough. Here are a few variations that are especially effective:

• 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 is not advisable. Instant pudding mix is actually formulated differently than cook-and-serve pudding mix. Cook-and-serve pudding requires heat to set and so it is not going to act the same when used in a cookie dough and won’t set the same way. The outcome is typically a different texture and in some cases, it can be a bit chewy in the center. Use instant pudding mix.

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

Yes, you can use regular M&M’s. The only problem is that they’re less evenly dispersed throughout the dough; you’ll end up getting some cookies with three M&M’s and some with only one. For more even dough distribution, use Mini M&M’s. Use regular M&M’s if that’s all you have, though. To combat the issue of M&M’s not being evenly distributed, you can also place a few on top of each dough ball right before you bake the cookies.

Why are my cookies coming out flat?

Baking is science, and even the smallest details can impact the final product, sometimes even the warmth of the butter can change how much the dough spreads in the oven. The three probable reasons you are experiencing excess spreading are: the butter was too warm (melted or very soft), you had a hot baking sheet going into the oven, or flour was packed into the measuring cup instead of spooned into it. All three lead to more spreading. Consider chilling the shaped dough balls for 20 minutes before you bake, try keeping your pans from batch to batch, and when you measure flour do so by spooning it and leveling, don’t pack it into the measuring cup.

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

The most common mistake made when baking chewy cookies is using too much flour. When measuring cups are scooped directly from the flour container, they contain much more flour than intended. Which changes the texture of cookies from chewy to cakey. When measuring flour, use the spoon method to fill the measuring cup, and then use a straight edge to level it off. Another reason that chewy cookies turn cakey is from overbaking. Chewy cookies should be removed from the oven while they are still slightly underdone.

Can I make this dough ahead of time?

Sure, dough can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to three days. Shaped dough balls can also be frozen. When you’re ready to bake them, you can bake them straight from the freezer — just remember to increase the baking time by 2–3 minutes. You can full batch of the dough, bake some now, then freeze the dough balls to bake later. This is the most handy part of the recipe.

Do I have to use parchment paper?

Using parchment paper isn’t mandatory, but it certainly helps. Parchment paper prevents the bottoms from becoming too brown and helps with cleanup. A good reusable option is silicone baking mats. If you don’t use either, then make sure to really grease the pan and check the bottoms a few minutes before the timer goes off. This is because bare metal pans conduct heat faster and the bottoms can get too brown before the tops are finished.

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 modified from The Baking Chocola Tess.