February 10, 2017

Soft and Chewy M&M Pudding Cookies

posted by Julie in Candy, Chocolate Desserts, Cookies, Desserts, Freezer Friendly, Recipes, Valentine's Day
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With a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy M&M pudding cookies are hard to beat!  Use regular M&Ms year round or special colors for your favorite holiday!

M&M Pudding Cookies: with a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy cookies are hard to beat! Use regular M&Ms year round or special colors for your favorite holiday! {Bunsen Burner Bakery}

Make no mistake, these M&M pudding cookies are perfect for year round.  Swap out the pink and red M&Ms for rainbow colors, and they’re perfect for every given Tuesday in the year.  Change it to red, white, and blue: 4th of July.  Black and orange: Halloween.  Blue and white: Hanukkah.  Red and green: Christmas.

But my personal favorite?  Valentine’s cookies.  I don’t know what it is about the pops of pink, but I love Valentine’s themed M&M cookies!  And most importantly, since I like to send these to friends – they stand up great to shipping!

M&M Pudding Cookies: with a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy cookies are hard to beat! Use regular M&Ms year round or special colors for your favorite holiday! {Bunsen Burner Bakery}

And my friends are always thrilled to receive this.  No joke, one of my friends texted me after receiving the package to say “Thanks a lot. You’ve destroyed my marriage.  I’m divorcing my husband and marrying your cookies instead.”

My husband, who provides more constructive criticism than anyone else for my baking, has made it very clear that he loves the base of these cookies.  (He likes it so much, in fact, that this batch of cookies stayed at home with him, rather than going to my coworkers.)

High praise indeed for a cookie!

So what’s the secret?  It’s so, so easy: a box of instant pudding mix!

M&M Pudding Cookies: with a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy cookies are hard to beat! Use regular M&Ms year round or special colors for your favorite holiday! {Bunsen Burner Bakery}

Why add pudding to cookies?

These M&M pudding cookies are, as the title implies, soft and chewy.  This is thanks to the not-so-secret ingredient: pudding mix!  Yes, it might be a little weird to put a box of pudding mix in the cookie dough, but not only does it keep the cookies nice and soft, it adds the perfect vanilla flavor.  

So how does adding a box of instant pudding make cookies extra soft?  The secret is in the thickening agents!  Instant pudding contains modified cornstarch, disodium phosphate, and tetrasodium phosphate. 

By adding in the box of pudding mix, we are both lowering the gluten content of the cookies (by adding additional dry ingredients to the flour) which helps prevent spreading, and adding a thickening agent to help absorb and hang onto the liquid in the dough. 

This means the cookies stay thick and spread less — the center stay tall and soft, rather than spreading and getting crispy along the edges.

We don’t want these to be too soft, though – they have to be dense enough to stand up to the full-size M&Ms.  I’ve tried replacing the chocolate chips in my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe with M&Ms, but the cookies weren’t quite heavy enough to stand up to such a large, crunchy candy. 

These cookies contain the same basic ingredients, but the ratio of flour and egg to the sugar and butter is reduced, resulting in a slightly denser cookie with less volume.

M&M Pudding Cookies: with a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy cookies are hard to beat! Use regular M&Ms year round or special colors for your favorite holiday! {Bunsen Burner Bakery}

Can M&M Pudding Cookies be frozen?

Yes, absolutely!  Making cookies ahead of time and freezing them is the perfect way to ensure you can always pull out a cookie on a whim!

To freeze these cookies, bake and fully cool the cookies.  Add to a freezer-safe storage bag and store in the freeze for up to 3 months.  To enjoy, thaw at room temperature.

You can also freeze the cookie dough if you want a freshly-baked cookie, without having to mix up the dough!   I like to add all ingredients, scoop into balls, and freeze the balls of dough on a cookie sheet. Once frozen solid, remove from the sheet and store in a freezer bag for up to 3 months.

When you’re ready to bake your cookies, place the frozen dough on your prepared cookie sheet.  Bake straight from frozen, adding 2 to 3 minutes to the baking time.  Fresh baked cookies, whenever you want them!

M&M Pudding Cookies: with a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy cookies are hard to beat! Use regular M&Ms year round or special colors for your favorite holiday! {Bunsen Burner Bakery}

Tips and Tricks for the Best M&M Pudding Cookies

  1. Start with room temperature butter and be sure to cream it together well with the brown sugar.  This ensure there are lots of little air pockets in the butter which helps prevent the cookies from spreading.
  2. Use instant pudding, not cook-and-serve.  The thickeners are different between the two, and using the cook-and-serve results in a gummier texture, which is not what we want in cookies!
  3. Don’t over mix once you add flour! Over mixing makes the dough stringy and dries out the cookies.  Then our thick and chewy pudding cookies become dry and stiff pudding cookies — no thanks!
  4. Ever wonder why bakery cookies are perfectly dotted with chocolate chips or M&Ms and your cookies at home aren’t?  Just adding them to the dough isn’t enough!  Press additional M&Ms on top of the dough before baking (or push them into the cookies immediately after taking them out of the oven).  

Another huge benefit to this recipe?  No chilling the dough.  Less time from when you start mixing the dough to when you start eating them – which is probably the single most important factor in a recipe, if you ask me!

More Cookie Recipes:

Soft and Chewy M&M Pudding Cookies

Soft and Chewy M&M Pudding Cookies

Yield: 2 dozen
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes

With a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy M&M pudding cookies are hard to beat!

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup butter, room temperature
  • 1 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla
  • 1 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 cups M&Ms, divided

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line an insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper or a baking mat.
  2. Using an electric mixer, beat together the butter and brown sugar until well combined and fluffy. Add in the egg and vanilla and continue mixing until smooth. Add in the pudding mix, baking soda, and salt.
  3. Mix in the flour, a half cup at a time, beating until just combined. Stir in 1 cup of the M&Ms.
  4. Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop the dough onto the baking sheet, leaving the rounded scoops of dough 2 inches apart. Press a few M&Ms into the surface of each cookie.
  5. Bake for 9-11 minutes, until edges are golden but center of cookie is still soft.
  6. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Notes

Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days or freeze wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in an airtight container for up to 3 months.

A Bunsen Burner Bakery Original Protocol

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Nutrition Information:
Yield: 24 Serving Size: 1 cookie
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 266Total Fat: 9.8gCarbohydrates: 42.5gProtein: 2.1g

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© Julie (Bunsen Burner Bakery)
Category: Cookies
M&M Pudding Cookies: with a rich vanilla flavor and the crunch of M&Ms, these soft and chewy cookies are hard to beat! #bunsenburnerbakery #cookies #mmcookies#valentinesday #puddingcookies

posted in Candy, Chocolate Desserts, Cookies, Desserts, Freezer Friendly, Recipes, Valentine's Day
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