Cookies and memories, M&M cookies

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M&M cookies
1 cup shortening
1 cup (8oz) brown sugar
½ cup (3 ½ oz) white sugar
2 eggs
2 tesp vanilla
2 ½ scant cups (10 ½ oz) unsifted flour
1 tesp soda
1 tesp salt
1 ½ cup M&Ms (one medium bag)
Preheat oven to 375F. Line baking sheets with parchment. Prepare cooling racks.
If you wish, open the bag of M&Ms, and pick out ½ cup of the colors you like the least. Remove and eat any broken or mutant M&Ms. Place the good colors in a separate bowl, or leave in the bag. Either hide the bowl or clip the bag closed to prevent "leakage".
In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine butter and sugars until well creamed. Add eggs and vanilla and mix thoroughly. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, soda and baking powder. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and mix thoroughly. Add ½ cup of M&Ms to the dough and mix gently so they don’t break.
Roll 1 Tbl of dough at a time into a balls and place 2 inches apart on prepared cooky sheets. Flatten the cookies slightly by hand or with the bottom of a glass. Cover as much of the surface as you can with the more-favorite colors of M&Ms. Bake in middle rack of oven about 12 minutes. If your oven has hotspots, rotate at the 6 minute mark. If using two baking sheets in one oven, trade places from top to bottom at the 6 minute mark.
When done, remove gently from baking sheets, or place entire sheet of parchment on cooling racks.

This past year I made two batches of this recipe, one with King Arthur Flour and one with Gold Medal Flour. Both were the unbleached all-purpose flour. The cookies made with King Arthur flour looked a little better, and held together around the edges. Sadly, by the time I was making the Gold Medal cookies, the King Arthur batch had already been sent out, so I have no side-by-side taste comparison.
I have no memory of where this recipe came from, probably from an M&M’s package. It is very close to the “M&M Party Cookies” recipe on their flashy website, except mine calls for regular-sized M&Ms and slightly more flour. I do remember reading a recipe in a teen magazine that amusingly and relentlessly referred to small, multi-colored candy-covered chocolate bits and not M&Ms, so perhaps it’s from there.

Comments

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Andrew likes these, keep them in the rotation.