Alex always wants to buy one of the giant bakery tubs of cookies when we go grocery shopping. I always say no because I can make just as many cookies at home for much less. I also know I can only eat about a bite of a store-bought cookie before I realize how disgusting they are. Store-bought cookies often look good, and may have a good texture sometimes, but I feel like I can taste the preservatives and filler that they have to add to make them shelf-stable. I do like a good shortbread or sugar cookie from the grocery store bakery, or Oreos, but otherwise I just try to stay away from them all.
I told Alex that we'd make cookies instead, since I hadn't made a recipe for the day. On the drive home, Alex said that I should make him peanut M&M cookies. I never said that I'd make whatever cookie he wanted, just that I'd make cookies as my recipe of the day. I didn't want to just toss peanut M&Ms in cookie dough because then I wouldn't be able to write about it here. He'd have to look up a new recipe for them. We went on about this for a while, and once home I beat him to the punch by finding a recipe before he did.
I expected that I'd make a drop cookie recipe (and I did find one), but what I made was ultimately better and more complex. Specifically, I found a recipe for Chocolate-Peanut Butter Peanut M&M Cookies. I never specifically want peanut butter cookies, but they're always surprisingly yummy when I have them. This recipe involved making a peanut butter dough, splitting it to add cocoa to one half, adding peanut M&Ms, and forming logs of dough to press together so that you have half-chocolate half-peanut butter cookies which are rolled in crushed M&Ms.
My slight changes: I buy natural peanut butter (without sugar or anything else added - the kind you have to refrigerate), so I used that rather than normal creamy peanut butter. I don't think it affected the recipe. I chilled the dough in the refrigerator, and it takes longer to chill that way than the directions said (although the time is probably correct if you freeze it). I was impatient, so I simply dealt with pretty sticky dough. Also, I didn't cut the logs as thinly as I was supposed to. I baked 26 cookies - the recipe's supposed to yield 36. Even so, we baked them for 14 minutes, the minimum baking time.
This was a pretty tasty cookie. I haven't made that many two-toned cookies, but this is the best one by far that I've ever made. They look very pretty. I'm a little sad that I didn't get them smaller so that I could have experienced a more classic crisp-edge soft-center cookie. My 26 cookies were very soft and tender. The dough expanded a lot while it baked, and although I'm not very good with describing food, I think I'd call the ones I made cakey.
I don't make log cookies very often because they're a little more work, but I think this is one such recipe that's worth making. I just won't make it very often because of the time involved. I'm looking forward to this recipe for work events or cookie exchanges, because they're visually appealing in addition to being delicious.
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