These Soft Oatmeal M&M Cookies are the softest, chewiest, and most delicious cookies ever. They are made with super simple ingredients, are easy to whip up in a pinch, and are customizable for any occasion. I promise, your friends and family will be all over these gooey and chocolatey soft oatmeal M&M cookies!
Why You NEED These Soft Oat M&M Cookies
- Thick and Puffy: These cookies are tall, chewy, and soft. With corn starch, oats, baking soda, and just the right ratio of ingredients, these cookies rise up to have gorgeous domes and high edges.
- Soft: The insides have a melt-in-your-mouth texture with a slightly crisp outside.
- Simple Ingredients: Oat m&m cookies are made with a handful of ingredients you likely have in your pantry or can easily find at your grocery store!
- Customizable: The best part about using M&Ms in this recipe is that these can be customized for any festivity, occasion, or celebration. Valentine's Day, Christmas, a birthday, a baby shower... switch out the color and flavor of the M&Ms to fit your needs!
Thick and Chewy M&M Cookie Ingredients
All Purpose Flour: It's plain and simple: all purpose flour creates soft and chewy cookies if measured correctly. This means using a kitchen scale or spooning flour into your measuring cups before using a knife to sweep the tops to level off the flour!
Old Fashioned Oats: These are oat cookies, not oatmeal cookies. Therefore, these cookies have just ½ cup of old fashioned oats for a hint of oat flavor and texture. Rolled oats are the best for the job!
Corn Starch: Corn starch is the secret to puffy, thick, and soft cookies. Do not leave it out!
Baking Soda: Baking soda is the leavening agent in these oat m&m cookies. It helps these cookies to rise to be thick and chewy!
Salt: Salt brings out the sweetness in this recipe! Reduce the salt to ¼ teaspoon if using salted butter.
Unsalted Butter: Unsalted butter is the base of this recipe and creates a chewy, flavorful cookie that holds its shape. It's important to use room temperature butter to ensure the dough comes together smoothly and is structured enough to stay puffy and thick rather than spreading and/or falling flat.
Light Brown Sugar + Granulated Sugar: Both sugars work together to create moist, sweet, and flavorful cookies. Try not to substitute one for the other, as they both impact this recipe differently.
Egg: You'll need one large egg at room temperature to add to the chewiness and structure of the cookies. It should be at room temperature, but if you forget to leave it out ahead of time, place it in a bowl of hot water for 5 minutes before using.
Vanilla Extract: Vanilla extract completes the flavor of the cookies and rounds out the taste!
Chocolate Chips: A combination of chocolate chip flavors and sizes creates a gorgeous texture and taste. Use what you have on hand, but I love mini semi sweet chocolate chips and regular size dark chocolate chips!
M&Ms: What is an M&M cookie without M&Ms? Using regular sized M&Ms or mini M&Ms will provide the best results, but choose whatever flavor or color you'd like!
Bakery-Style Cookies
Here are my tips for making gorgeous, bakery-style cookies:
- Decorate the Tops: Push additional chocolate chips and M&Ms into the tops of the unbaked dough balls before baking for professional-looking cookies!
- Rounding the Edges: Often, cookies don't bake into a perfect circle. However, if you are looking for perfectly rounded cookies, use a knife or the back of a spoon to push the cookie into a circle. You will need to do this while the cookie is almost done baking or directly out of the oven.
- Storing: Do not store the cookies until the toppings and mix-ins have fully set. If you wrap or stack the cookies before they have fully cooled and fully set, you will likely smudge the chocolate pieces of the cookie. This will creating a messier cookie!
Cookie Baking FAQ
You absolutely can bake with regular, plain, classic M&Ms! There's no need for anything fancy. In fact, I highly recommend using either mini m&ms or the classic M&Ms for best results in these cookies to ensure that the chocolate is spread throughout the batter appropriately and the cookies bake to be thick and chewy!
If your cookies are flat, this could mean that you undermeasured your flour, used butter that was too warm or melty, or underbaked the cookies. Both undermeasuring flour and using warm butter would lead to cookies with too much moisture and not enough structure and stability. Similarly, underbaking cookies will lead the centers to fall flat without enough time to set and firm up in the oven.
Yes! You can freeze M&M cookies before baking or after baking. Freeze the dough balls with the toppings pushed into the tops of the balls as desired either individually wrapped, in a freezer bag, or airtight container for up to 3 months. Bake immediately after removing the balls from the freezer, but note that the cookies will likely take an extra few minutes to bake. You can freeze the cookies after they have fully cooled individually wrapped, in a freezer bag, or an airtight container for up to 5 months. Allow the cookies to come to room temperature, heat in the microwave, or heat in the stove to thaw.
Expert Tips & Tricks
- Measuring Flour: Importantly, you must measure your flour accurately. If you undermeasure your flour, you will end up with flat, gooey cookies... and not the good gooey. If you overmeasure your flour, you will end up with dense, hard, and tough cookies. To measure flour correctly, you can:
- Measure out 210g of flour exactly using a kitchen scale
- Use a spoon to transfer your flour from your container to your measuring cup. Then, use a knife to sweep across the top to level off the flour
- Mixture of Chocolate: Though the recipe simply calls for chocolate chips, I LOVE using a mixture of chocolate chips of different flavors in sizes. Personally, regular-sized dark chocolate chips mixed with semi sweet mini chocolate chips creates such a gorgeous look and flavor! You are more than welcome to use white chocolate, giant chocolate chips... anything your heart desires!
- Baking: You'll want to bake these soft oatmeal M&M cookies until they are
- soft and slightly shiny in the center
- light golden brown on top
- golden brown around the edges
Related Recipes
Print
Oatmeal M&M Cookies
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 14 cookies 1x
- Category: Cookies, M&Ms, Chocolate, Oatmeal
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: American
Description
These Oatmeal M&M Cookies are the softest, chewiest, and most delicious cookies ever. They are made with super simple ingredients, are easy to whip up in a pinch, and are customizable for any occasion.
Ingredients
- 1 ¾ cup (210g) all purpose flour
- ½ cup (40g) old fashioned oats
- 2 tablespoons (18g) corn starch
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup (110g) unsalted butter, room temperature
- ⅔ cup (160g) light brown sugar
- ¼ cup (53g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg (50g), room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup (180g) chocolate chips + additional for topping as desired
- 1 cup (200g) M&Ms + additional for topping as desired
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line baking sheets with parchment paper to ensure the cookies come off of the pan cleanly after they have baked and cooled.
- In a medium bowl, whisk properly measured all purpose flour, old fashioned oats, corn starch, baking soda, and salt together until combined.
- In a large bowl or in the bowl of your stand mixer that is fitted with a paddle attachment, beat room temperature unsalted butter, light brown sugar, and granulated sugar together on high speed for at least 3 minutes until light, fluffy, smooth, and slightly shiny.
- Add egg and vanilla extract to the batter. Beat on medium speed and scrape down the sides and the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula to ensure the ingredients incorporate properly.
- Slowly, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, adding carefully and in a few additions to ensure the flour mixture does not spill out of the bowl. Beat until smooth but do not mix past the point when you see the dry ingredients mix into the wet. Overmixing can impact the look and texture of the cookies.
- Add chocolate chips and M&Ms into the batter until distributed.
- Roll the dough into about 2-tablespoon (55-60g) balls. Push additional chocolate chips and/or M&Ms into the tops of the cookie dough balls to add additional decoration for bakery-style cookies.
- Bake the cookies for 10-13 minutes until the tops look set, slightly soft in the center, and slightly shiny on top. If you carefully lift a cookie off of the baking sheet using a spatula, the bottom of the cookie should look golden brown.
- Allow the cookies to cool on the pan for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack to finish cooling or a plate. If the cookies look overbaked, carefully remove them from the pan immediately to prevent them from cooking further.
- Allow the cookies to fully cool and the chocolate to harden before storing at room temperature tightly covered or in an airtight container for up to 4 days or in the freezer for up to 5 months.
Keywords: Oatmeal Cookies, M&M Cookies, Oatmeal M&M, Chocolate Chip
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