BEST MONSTER COOKIES

The Best Monster Cookies are made with peanut butter, chocolate chips, M&Ms and oatmeal! All of your favorite cookie flavors combined in one delicious cookie!

I really love Peanut Butter Cookies and I really love Chocolate Chip Cookies, but I also really like Oatmeal Cookies….it’s just so hard to make a decision sometimes! Whenever I feel like I can’t make a decision, I usually whip up a batch of Monster Cookies since they are like a combination of all of my favorite cookies! Plus M&Ms….which are always a good idea!

What are Monster Cookies?

Monster Cookies are cookies that have peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips and M&Ms in them. These Monster Cookies are soft, chewy and absolutely delicious!

Some tips for making the Best Monster Cookies:

• Make sure your butter is softened, NOT melted! One of the most common errors in cookie making is using butter that is either really cold and hard, or using butter that is too warm and melted. If you have time, just leave butter out on the counter for about 1-2 hours before making your cookies. If you are like me and don’t plan your cookie cravings that far in advance, just place the butter in your microwave and soften in 5 second intervals, being very careful to pull it out before it melts. I actually like to use the defrost setting on my microwave to soften butter- I don’t know the technical reasons behind it, but it seems to soften the butter more evenly and takes a little bit longer so I’m less likely to start melting it! 
• Preheat the oven. This will help your cookies turn out right every time!
• Use a cookie scoop! If you want all your cookies to be perfectly shaped and have them all be the same size, a cookie scoop is the way to go.
• Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Doing this will make it really easy to remove the cookies from your cookie sheet so that you don’t have to scrape them off the pan – they will just slide right off in perfect shape!
• Don’t over bake the cookies – when I take mine out of the oven, they still look slightly under baked but they will continue to bake on the cookie sheet for a couple more minutes so that’s ok!

Ingredients in the Best Monster Cookies

Sugar & brown sugar – Can’t have cookies without sugar, right?! Make sure your brown sugar is fresh and not dried out for best results.

Butter – You will need one stick of butter, softened to room temperature.

Peanut butter – The recipe calls for regular creamy peanut butter. You can use crunchy if you prefer. For best results, avoid more “natural” peanut butters as they don’t tend to work very well in most baked goods.

Eggs – You’ll need 3 large eggs to bind all of the ingredients together.

Vanilla extract – The higher the quality of vanilla, the better. The recipe only calls for 1 teaspoon, but feel free to add a little more if you want!

Baking soda – This acts as the leavening agent in the cookies so make sure it isn’t expired!

Oats – You will need to measure out 4 1/2 cups of old-fashioned oats and place them in a blender to grind into flour. You can just put them in the cookies without grinding them, but I absolutely love the consistency of the cookies when using the oat flour.

Chocolate chips – I like mini chocolate chips, but regular semi-sweet chips work great too!

M&Ms – I like the mini ones, but you can use regular ones too! I like to mix a cup of them into the batter and then have some extra ones to stick on top of the cookie dough balls right before baking. This makes them more visible and your cookies will be prettier!

How to make the Best Monster Cookies

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream the sugars, butter and peanut butter together for about 2 minutes with an electric mixer.

Add eggs, vanilla and corn syrup and mix well.

Add baking soda and oatmeal and mix until well combined. Stir in the chocolate chips and M&Ms. Feel free to add more chocolate chips and M&Ms if desired!

Use a cookie scoop to scoop out tablespoonfuls of dough and place 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheet for about 4-5 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool.

Are Monster Cookies gluten-free?

If you use gluten-free oats in this recipe, these Monster Cookies are completely gluten-free! The oats in this recipe are ground into a flour and no other flours are needed. We aren’t gluten-free in my house and I don’t have much experience baking with alternate flours. We do have some friends that are gluten-free though and so these Monster Cookies are a delicious treat we can all enjoy without having to make any modifications!

KITCHEN GADGETS FOR MAKING THE BEST COOKIES

Three kitchen items really help you make the best cookies ever! I actually use these items in nearly every cookie recipe I make, as well as several other types of recipes, so they’re quite versatile.

First, I line my cookie sheets with a piece of parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. They’re sold in sizes that fit a 12×16 cookie sheet perfectly and enable to cookies to bake well without sticking- and no mess from spraying oil on the cookie sheets!

The second item is a KitchenAid mixer. I love mine! I have a Bosch as well but I find I use my KitchenAid for cookies. There is a cookie paddle that comes with every mixer that you attach to the top of the mixer. They’re easy to use and help you mix the ingredients uniformly. Add this to your wish list because it’s one of my all-time used small appliances ever!

The third item is a cookie scoop! Years and years ago I used to use 2 spoons to measure and scrape cookie dough onto the pans. It wasn’t a perfect process and I often ended up with oblong cookies in various sizes. A friend of mine brought cookies to a party and I noticed each and every one of her cookies looked PERFECT. Her secret? A cookie scoop! They come in three sizes- 1/2 tablespoon, 1.5 tablespoon and 3 tablespoon scoops. I used the smallest size- 1/2 tablespoon for these thumbprint cookies.

HOW DO YOU SOFTEN BUTTER?

I like to soften butter by using the defrost function on my microwave. If you need the full 1/2 cup cube of butter, you can leave it in the paper wrapper, otherwise, place the amount of butter you need in a glass or porcelain bowl. I use the lowest defrost setting on my microwave and just let it run for 20 seconds. Check the butter and see how soft it is by pressing it with a rubber scraper. If it is still not soft to the touch, meaning it doesn’t indent when you press into it, let it warm for another 5-10 seconds. Watch it closely! Butter softens very quickly.

Love peanut butter cookies? So do we! Here are some of our favorite peanut butter cookie recipes:

• Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Cups
• 5 Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
• Rice Krispie Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies
• Peanut Butter Cookie in a Mug
• Reese’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Cake Mix Peanut Butter Blossoms
• Reese’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
• Reese’s Peanut Butter Pudding Cookies
• Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies
• Snickers Peanut Butter Cookies
• The Best Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Peanut Butter Fudge Cups

The Best Monster Cookies are made with peanut butter, chocolate chips, M&Ms and oatmeal! All of your favorite cookie flavors combined in one delicious cookie!

My kids finally started school a couple weeks ago. Up here in WA, they don’t start until after Labor Day which feels really late to me! This summer was a great one, but it went by way too fast and here we are trying to get back into a routine. I’ve got kids at three different schools this year which is a little bit crazy but we are starting to get it figured out!