When my son was getting ready to go back to school, I decided that I would make him cookies for an after school snack on the first day of school. He had been asking for m & m cookies for a while, so I decided to adapt my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe for him. I added chocolate chips with the mini m & ms, but next time I promised him I would just use the candy!
This recipe is my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe because it produces the best taste, texture and appearance in a cookie. While I can't really explain the chemistry behind why they are so good, I know it has to do with using cake and bread flour instead of all purpose flour and letting the dough sit in the refrigerator for a day (or more!) This recipe makes a lot of cookies, so I usually only bake about half the dough. The remainder of the dough I shape into balls with a cookie scoop and freeze on a sheet. Then when frozen, I store the unbaked cookies in a sealed bag with the baking directions written on the outside in sharpie. Then whenever we want a few fresh baked cookies I can pull out just what is needed to bake.
The original recipe I used was in the New York Times. Simply titled, Chocolate Chip Cookies and adapted from Jacques Torres, I think they really need to give them a fancier name! I have made them by simply measuring the ingredients and also by weighing the ingredients, which makes the recipe more precise. I've yielded great results both ways. I do use my own vanilla extract in the recipe as well as usually a bag and a half of chocolate chips. This time I used one bag of mini m & ms and about half a bag of Ghiradelli semi sweet chips. I also omit the salt on top of the cookies that the original recipe calls for, as I think it's unnecessary.
Creaming the butter and sugars together for the right length of time is really important. I tend to leave my butter out on the counter all day so that it really is room temperature. Beating it for a bit over five minutes gives this super creamy look that shows how well incorporated the butter and sugars are.
I think next time I make these I'll just use regular sized m & ms and no chips. The minis worked, but seemed to need the chocolate support of the additional chips. The kiddo was actually furious that I added chocolate chips too. That had NOTHING to do with the fact that he was exhausted from being in full day kindergarten that week. Really.
I found it hard to wait to bake these, but having the dough chilled for a day really seems to help. I know there is a great scientific explanation for this somewhere, but I haven't bothered to investigate it. Where is Alton Brown when you need him!??
I used a large cookie scoop to make these. I've seen some recipes that call for weighing the dough so that they are all the same size, but I'm baking for a kid, not a bakery! The cookies do turn out on the large size, but that is part of their fun. My unbaked cookie balls were about the size of a golf ball.
The end results were delicious! The kiddo has already requested these again!
