M&M chocolate cookies are delicious family treats. They are also eye catching cookies as the bright colors of the M&Ms really stand out against the darker chocolate cookies. Your kids will LOVE LOVE LOVE these super easy chocolate cookies!
Key Ingredient – Delicious M&Ms!

M&M chocolate cookies are fun & colorful cookies to make for Christmas, birthdays, special occasions (i.e. a celebration for an A+ on a test!), etc. You can also turn these cookies into a wonderful family project. Have your kids help you to make the M&M cookies. For example, they can place various colored M&Ms on the cookie dough tops in order to create interesting shapes & patterns… while secretly munching on a few M&Ms that they have “liberated” when you have turned your back.
Kids LOVE M&M Chocolate Cookies!!

If you liked this easy M&M cookies recipe, we hope you will leave a comment below and give us a 5 star rating. Thank you in advance! We also have a printable and “pin-able” cookie recipe located at the bottom of this page. For more great recipes (i.e. Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies), please visit Bread Dad’s main Easy Cookie Recipes section.
Ingredients – M&M Chocolate Cookies Recipe
- 16 Tablespoons – Unsalted Butter (softened) – 230 grams
- 2 – Large Eggs (lightly beaten)
- 3/4 Cup – Light Brown Sugar (packed cup) – 161 grams
- 3/4 Cup – White Granulated Sugar – 150 grams
- 1 Teaspoon – Vanilla Extract – 5 milliliters
- 2 Cups – Flour (all purpose flour) – 240 grams
- 3/4 Cup – Cocoa Powder Natural Unsweetened (not hot chocolate powder) – 63 grams
- 1 Teaspoon – Baking Soda – 5 grams
- 1/2 Teaspoon – Salt – 3 grams
- 1 Cup – M&Ms (milk chocolate) – 170 grams
Servings – Roughly 24-30 cookies (amount depends on the size of the cookie that you create)
Equipment – Measuring cup & spoons, mixing bowl, electric mixer, tablespoon or cookie dough scoop, oven mitts, silicon spatula, baking sheets, cooling rack and an oven. Please visit Bread Dad’s baking tools section if you are missing anything.
Press M&Ms into the Tops of the Cookie Dough “Patties” & Then Bake
Instructions – M&M Chocolate Cookies Recipe
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Soften butter in the microwave.
- Lightly beat eggs.
- Mix eggs, butter, granulated white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Use an electric mixer to mix these ingredients together. Mix until creamy.
- Then stir in the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Do not add the M&Ms at this time. Use an electric mixer to mix all of the ingredients together. Mix until ingredients are completely blended and cookie dough looks creamy. FYI – Read the tips section below to find out why using an electric mixer results in a much better cookie than mixing by hand.
- Scoop dough with a tablespoon or cookie dough scoop and place this dough “ball” onto a nonstick baking sheet & press down to create a cookie “patty”. You will need at least 2 baking sheets in order to bake all of the cookies at the same time (if they can fit in your oven) or you will need to bake each batch separately (one after the other).
- Leave space of roughly 2-3 inches between each dough ball because the cookies will spread as they bake.
- Gently press M&Ms into the tops of each cookie dough patty.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes.
- Remove baking tray from the oven. Wear oven mitts. Leave cookies on baking sheet to cool for 2-3 minutes. Otherwise, cookies might break when removed from the baking sheet.
- Use a spatula to remove cookies and place cookies on wire cooling racks in order to cool completely.
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. It is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!
Tips – Easy M&M Cookies Recipe
- Legal info – M&M’s® is a registered trademark of Mars, Incorporated.
- The tips below are designed to help cookie “novices” and/or people with limited baking experience.
- If you want to print out this recipe, please scroll down the page to our recipe widget “box”. You will find a “print recipe” button located right under the product image photo in this box. Click on that button in order to print out the basic recipe instructions.
- I used milk chocolate M&Ms to make these easy M&M cookies. However, to make things extra special, you can use your children’s favorite M&Ms in order to make your cookies. There are tons of different M&Ms such as M&M minis, caramel M&Ms, etc.
- You can even make M&M peanut butter cookies by using peanut butter M&Ms.
- Or you can create even fancier chocolate M&M cookies with “personalized” M&Ms (i.e. M&Ms with your child’s face, their names, etc.). Visit the official M&M website to see how to personalize M&M candy.
- You can make your chocolate M&M cookies with a variety of different colors or cookies that contain only a single color (i.e. cookies with only blue M&Ms).
- For the pictures above, I used roughly 7-9 M&Ms for each cookie top.
- Optional – You can add a 1/2 cup of dried fruit (i.e. dried cranberries) and/or chopped nuts (i.e. chopped walnuts) to make these M&M cookies even more unique. Just mix the dried fruit/chopped nuts into the cookie dough before making the cookie dough balls.
- You can even make fun M&M Christmas cookies by shaping the M&Ms into triangle Xmas trees on top of the cookie dough.
- If you liked these M&M cookies then you should also try our M&M chocolate chip cookies recipe. It produces a lighter colored M&M cookie because the recipe does not use cocoa powder.
- Don’t use hot chocolate powder as a substitute for the cocoa powder. For the best results, you should stick to natural unsweetened cocoa powder (which is used mainly for baking).
- Natural unsweetened cocoa powder is the ingredient that provides these chocolate cookies with their fantastic dark chocolaty color & flavor. According to Wikipedia, cocoa powder is “the pulverized cocoa solids left after extracting almost all the cocoa butter. It is used to add chocolate flavor in baking, and for making chocolate drinks”.
- Cookies come out much better if you mix the ingredients with an electric mixer. The cookie dough comes out “creamier” and the ingredients are blended in better if you use an electric mixer.
- Completely mix the eggs, butter and sugar together with an electric mixer BEFORE adding the flour. This will result in much better cookies. See the inadequately blended problems in the line below.
- Mixing only by hand can lead to the cookie dough being inadequately blended. This can result in your cookies having unwanted “clumps” of ingredients (i.e. small flour clumps) and/or a gritty texture (inadequately blended sugar grains). Use an electric mixer for best results.
- You can make the cookie dough balls (drops, spoonfuls, etc.) with 2 tablespoons, a cookie dough scoop or your hands. Some people also like to wear food grade plastic gloves when making cookie dough balls/drops.
- Use of a cookie dough scoop will give you more consistently shaped cookies versus varying sizes from using a less “exact” methods such as using a tablespoon or your hands.
- For “rounder” cookies (with no edges sticking out), you can use a cookie dough scoop or mold the cookie dough by hand into round balls and then press down on the dough ball until it turns into a patty or pancake shape.
- For a more “natural” cookie shape, you can scoop the cookie dough with a tablespoon and place the cookie dough “drops” onto the baking sheet without shaping the dough. Your cookies will taste great and just have a few more natural edges and bumps.
- Interesting fact – According to Wikipedia, “The candy-coated chocolate concept was inspired by a method used to allow soldiers in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) to carry chocolate in warm climates without it melting”.
- If you have a problem with a cookie recipe, please make sure that you are following the recipe exactly (i.e. using the correct oven temperature), using the correct amounts of ingredients (i.e. don’t eyeball the measurements versus using a measuring cup or accidentally add a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for), using the correct ingredients (i.e. baking soda/powder versus yeast or all purpose flour versus bread flour), etc. Please don’t “wing” things with recipes.
- In addition, you should always try to use relatively fresh baking soda & powder for the best results. For example, using baking soda from an open container (that has been deodorizing your refrigerator for months) may lead to subpar results. Old & hard baking soda/powder may lead to rising problems and/or leave small bitter clumps in your chocolate cookies.
- Historical Fact – According to Wikipedia, in 1938 “Ruth Wakefield invented the chocolate chip cookie. She added chopped up bits from a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar into a cookie” and “Andrew Nestlé and Ruth Wakefield made a business arrangement: Wakefield gave Nestlé the right to use her cookie recipe and the Toll House name for one dollar and a lifetime supply of Nestlé chocolate”.
- FYI – Many chocolate chip cookie recipes are some type of variation of this original Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe. For more information, you should read the Wikipedia article on Chocolate Chip Cookies.
- My recipes are based on US ingredient measurements (i.e. US cups & tablespoons). However, as a courtesy to our European visitors, I have also included some very ROUGH European equivalents (i.e. grams & milliliters). Since I rarely use European measurements when baking, please let me know in the comment section below if any of the European ingredient measurements need to be changed (i.e. for XYZ ingredient, milliliters are more commonly used versus the grams information listed in the recipe).
- Always wear oven mitts/gloves when dealing with ovens, hot baking sheets, etc.
- Be safe! Food that contains candy and/or nuts is a potential choking hazard for very young children.
- For more cookie recipes (i.e. milk chocolate chip, butterscotch or cranberry), please visit Bread Dad’s main Easy Cookie Recipes section.
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. It is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!
Reference Sources
- Wikipedia, Chocolate
- Wikipedia, Cocoa Solids
- Wikipedia, M&M’s
Easy M&M Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients
- 16 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter (softened)
- 2 Eggs (large)
- 3/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar (packed cup)
- 3/4 Cup White Granulated Sugar
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 2 Cups Flour (all purpose flour)
- 3/4 Cup Cocoa Powder Natural Unsweetened (not hot chocolate powder)
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
- 1 Cup M&Ms (milk chocolate)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Soften butter in the microwave.
- Lightly beat eggs.
- Mix eggs, butter, granulated white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Use an electric mixer to mix these ingredients together. Mix until creamy.
- Then stir in the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Do not add the M&Ms at this time. Use an electric mixer to mix all of the ingredients together. Mix until ingredients are completely blended and cookie dough looks creamy. FYI – Read the tips section below to find out why using an electric mixer results in a much better cookie than mixing by hand.
- Scoop dough with a tablespoon or cookie dough scoop and place this dough “ball” onto a nonstick baking sheet & press down to create a cookie "patty". You will need at least 2 baking sheets in order to bake all of the cookies at the same time (if they can fit in your oven) or you will need to bake each batch separately (one after the other).
- Leave space of roughly 2-3 inches between each dough ball because the cookies will spread as they bake.
- Gently press M&Ms into the tops of each cookie dough patty.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes.
- Remove baking tray from the oven. Wear oven mitts. Leave cookies on baking sheet to cool for 2-3 minutes. Otherwise, cookies might break when removed from the baking sheet.
- Use a spatula to remove cookies and place cookies on wire cooling racks in order to cool completely.
Notes
Nutrition
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. Your comments help us to improve & clarify our recipe instructions. Moreover, it is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!!
Related Recipes
- Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies
- No Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- No Butter Oatmeal Cookies with Chocolate Chips & Cranberries
- No Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Trail Mix Cookies
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