Soft-baked Chocolate M&M Cookies

It's the nephews' 4th and 7th birthday party. Off to a very adventurous party we went, with bouldering and rock wall-climbing activities slated for the morning. I toyed with the idea of spiderman cookies as with the nature of the party or ironman themed cookie pops as the boys love their action heroes. However, thought of all those coloured fondant that the kids will probably all gobble up happily, regardless of the preservatives and chemicals, puts me off. At least the adults usually know to remove these layers but to a gleeful kid, probably not. 

Decided upon M&Ms as the main cast then as I recalled the boys picking off all those chocolate candies on the cupcakes I baked for their last birthday. Off I went to bake a batch of soft doughy brown-sugar cookies with additional chunks of semi-sweet chocolate for a touch of gooey indulgence. 

These cookies from Sallys Baking Addictions are a breeze to bake. Not even needing a mixer, all it took was 2 bowls and probably 10 minutes to mix everything up. Chill for 2 hours and into the oven they went. The cookies stayed beautifully tall with the M&Ms dotting them prettily. Each tablespoon of dough spread into a regular Scotch tape size and has around 1cm of height to it. The crumb is soft and chewy, which crumbles into big pieces with a little pressure so eat these little gems carefully or you will be spilling and sweeping afterwards. 

I was also initially worried if little children will take to soft cookies as they are probably more used to store-bought crispy sweet cookies. To my delight, I see them biting into these pillowy rounds happily, reaching for 1 after 1 after 1. Caught my little nephew having 4! Hope it was not just the M&Ms he was going after though. 

I do prefer my cookies to have a crisp top though these cookies are probably not meant to have so I may bake them at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time the next I try these. Nonetheless, these are addictive and what was meant to be 65 pieces of servings at the party dwindled to 50 by the time we got there. 

Ingredients (Source)

2 1/4 cups AP Flour

1 Tsp Baking Soda

1 1/2 Tsp Cornstarch

1/2 Tsp seasalt

170g unsalted butter, melted

3/4  cup light brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

2 Tsp vanilla essence

100g chocolate chunks

100g M&M

Steps:

1. Sift flour, soda, cornstarch, seasalt together.

2. Melt the butter and in a large bowl, mix well with both sugars and egg/yolk and vanilla essence.

3. Mix flour mixture into the butter mixture in 2 addictions, mixing well each time but do not overwork the mixing. 

4. Mix in the chocolate chunks. 

5. Cover and chill the dough in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

6. Before baking, pre-heat oven to 150C top-bottom fan mode.

7. Let the dough relax at room temperature for 10 minutes.

8. Roll into 1 tablespoon-sized dough and press  3 to 4 M&Ms into surface of the dough. 

9. Bake for 12 minutes. Dough will have flatten slightly but remains relatively tall and chunky.

10. Let the cookies rest on tray for 10minutes before cooling. 

11. Eat 1 while it's still a little warm and sigh in satisfaction. 

12. Cool the rest completely and keep them in air-tight containers at room temperature. 

Try not to finish all at 1 go. Try very hard. It's that good. =)