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 for these delicious cookies that stay soft for days.

Is there anything more nostalgic than a soft, chewy cooking bursting with colorful M&Ms? Whether it’s a cookie, chocolate-covered pretzel, or fancy rice krispie treat, my kids always choose the one that is covered in M&Ms. So it’s probably no surprise that these are their favorite cookies.

But it’s not just my kids! I make a quadruple batch of these cookies every February, fill them with the pink, red, and white Valentine’s M&M mix, and ship them out to my friends, and they receive high paise. One year, I received the following text in response to my cookie package: “Thanks a lot. You’ve destroyed my marriage.  I’m divorcing my husband and marrying this cookie instead.”

Not only are these cookies delicious, they’re also fun! Regular M&Ms are colorful and cheerful, but with all the M&M holiday color packs out there, these are so easy to change up for holidays. Red, white, and blue for 4th of July. Black, orange, and purple for Halloween. Blue and white for Chanukah, or red and green for Christmas. Use school colors, the colors of your favorite NFL team – the possibilities are truly endless.

And thanks to my not-so-secret ingredient (it’s right there in the title!), these cookies stay soft for days. Perfect for to bake ahead for a party or cookie swap, to drop in the mail, or just because you feel like cookies. Let’s break down how to make them so you can whip up a batch that’s perfectly soft, chewy, and loaded with M&Ms every time.

This recipe is part of The Sweetest Season, an annual virtual cookie swap. Every year, food bloggers get together to share new holiday cookie recipes and help raise money for Cookies 4 Kids’ Cancer, a recognized 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to funding research for new treatments for childhood cancer. Help us raise money for this important cause! Donate through our fundraising page and OXO will be matching every dollar raised through the end of 2024, up to $100,000.

Ingredients and Substitutions

• Butter: I always bake with unsalted butter. If you’re using salted, reduce the amount of butter in the recipe accordingly.
• Brown Sugar: Using brown sugar instead of granulated helps keep these cookies super soft and adds even more flavor!
• Egg
• Vanilla Extract
• Instant Vanilla Pudding Mix: While I usually use vanilla pudding mix, choosing other flavors lets you customize the cookies! Choose a flavor that pairs well with the M&Ms – like chocolate or cookies and cream. (I don’t recommend lemon pudding mix!)
• Baking Soda: Not a mistake – these cookies use baking soda, not baking powder!
• Salt: This works with Morton’s kosher salt, sea salt, or table salt – but if you’re using Diamond Kosher salt, reduce the salt as necessary.
• Flour: To keep the cookies gluten-free, use a 1:1 all-purpose gluten-free baking mix containing xanthan gum, designed for direct substitution.
• M&Ms: Full-size M&Ms are my standard go-to, but mini M&Ms (or a mixture of full-size and mini!) are also fun.

How to Make Soft M&M Cookies

1. Cream the Butter: Cream the butter and brown sugar in a bowl until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract, mixing until smooth.

2. Add Dry Ingredients: Add the pudding mix, baking soda, and salt to the bowl. Mix in the flour, half a cup at a time, until just combined. Don’t overmix the dough – it creates tougher cookies!

3. Fold in M&Ms: Gently fold in most of the M&Ms, reserving a handful to press on top of the cookies before baking.

4. Scoop the Dough: Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop or heaping tablespoon to transfer rounded scoops of dough onto the cookie sheet. Press a few remaining M&Ms into the surface of each cookie.
5. Bake the Cookies: Bake for 9-11 minutes, until the edges are set but the center looks slightly underbaked. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Adding Pudding = Extra Soft 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!  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. 

Kitchen Chemistry

Adding a box of pudding mix to cookie dough both lowers the gluten content of the cookies (by adding additional dry ingredients to the flour) which helps prevent spreading, and adds 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 stays 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 sturdy 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 sugar and butter is reduced, resulting in a slightly denser cookie with less volume.

Perfect Cookies to Freeze

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 the ingredients, scoop the dough 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.  Freshly baked cookies, whenever you want them!

Tips and Tricks for the Best M&M Pudding Cookies

1. Room Temperature Butter: The butter should be at cool room temperature before starting and cream it together well with the brown sugar.  This ensures there are lots of little air pockets in the butter which helps prevent the cookies from spreading.
2. Instant Pudding: 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! 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. Extra M&Ms for Topping: Press a few M&Ms on top of the dough before baking (or push them into the cookies immediately after taking them out of the oven) for cookies that are perfectly dotted with M&Ms like a bakery.
5. Use a Cookie Scoop: A cookie scoop ensures evenly sized cookies, which bake consistently and look professional.
6. One Tray at a Time: For even baking, bake one tray at a time in the center of the oven.
7. Swap the Colors: Match the M&M colors to whatever holiday you’re celebrating for a fun and festive treat, like these Valentine’s themed cookies below!

More Colorful M&M Recipes:

• M&M Candy Cake
• M&M Cookie Cake
• M&M Pretzel Kisses
• No Bake M&M Peanut Butter Pretzel Pie

This recipe was first published February 2017 and was updated with new pictures and helpful tips in December 2024.