Monster Cookies!!

Monster Cookies!! These gnarly looking cookies are a mash up of choc chip, peanut butter and oatmeal cookies They’re crispy on the edges and chewy inside, littered with bright M&M’s and melty chocolate chips, and are as fun to make as they are to eat!

Monster Cookies

I don’t know whether they’re called Monster Cookies because they’re monstrously loaded with goodies or because they’re monstrously ugly in the best possible way. Either way, they’re here today because I ran into last-minute issues with a much more mature recipe I was planning to share.

There was much huffing and puffing about all the time I’d wasted preparing that post, but as they say, every cloud has a silver lining, and these colourful Monster Cookies are what I reached for to lift my grumpy mood. They cheered me up so much, I decided you should get to enjoy them too!

What are Monster Cookies, you ask? I’m glad you did! They’re a mash-up of peanut butter, oatmeal and choc chip cookies, typically chunky, chewy and loaded with M&M’s and choc chips. The name may come from the monster mash-up, though I prefer to think they’re the sort of cookie a Cookie Monster would go mad over!

Ingredients in Monster Cookies

Here’s what you need to make these.

1. For the Monster Cookie Dough

The cookie dough is based on my Brown Butter Oatmeal Choc Chip Cookies (I am very fond of these!), except we aren’t browning the butter here. I didn’t think it was worth it – so many other flavours going on here – peanut butter and so much chocolate!

• Peanut butter – This recipe calls for the commercial spread type of peanut butter like Bega (Australia), Jif and Skippy (US) and Sun-Pat (UK) which have sugar, salt and stabilisers added. Yup, the full on commercial sandwich spread stuff! Not the wholesome pure peanut butter which is made with 100% peanut butter, it is thinner and the batter will be too loose.

• Oats – Just ordinary rolled oats, not quick cooking oats, not steel cut, and not one of those flavoured sweetened sachets for porridge! Oats gives these cookies a great chewiness and some lovely texture.

• Flour – Regular plain / all-purpose flour. Self raising flour won’t work for these cookies, I think they will come out shaped like rock cakes!

• Baking soda (bicarbonate soda) – This makes the cookie rise a bit, and also spread. If you use baking powder instead using the standard conversion of 1:3, the cookies bake thicker and the inside is not as chewy, they are a bit more puffy.

• Brown sugar – I only use brown sugar in these cookies to give them a lovely caramel-y flavour and make them a nice brown colour.

• Egg – A fridge cold large egg, from cartons labelled “large eggs” which are approximately 50-55g/2oz in the shell. Using a fridge cold one helps make the cookie dough stiffer so we don’t need to chill it in the fridge like most cookie doughs, before rolling into balls.

• Unsalted butter, melted- The butter is melted so there’s no need to soften it like you often see in cookie recipes. But you do need to cut it into pieces so it melts evenly.

• Salt – This brings out the flavours in the cookie, and peanut butter in particular loves salt.

• Vanilla extract – Just to add a little bit more flavour into the cookie, complimenting rather than overwhelming the peanut butter flavour.

2. the add-ins

I use M&M and chocolate chips which are classic add-ins for Monster Cookies. And I use a generous amount – 1 1/2 cups in total! Feel free to use whatever you have or want though – think, nuts, dried fruit, peanut or toffee chips. Anything!

• M&M’s – Just regular M&M’s, the plain ones without nuts or crispy rice inside. The recipe calls for 1 cup to mix in (200g) plus about 3 tablespoons extra (35g) for pressing on the surface once it comes out of the oven.

  Here in Australia we have 180g “snack and share” size bags – if you want to just get one of those, that’s fine, just top up with more chocolate chips, or other add-ins like nuts.

• Chocolate chips – I use dark chocolate chips, called semi-sweet chocolate chips in the US. You can use whatever type of chocolate chips you want, or even chop up a block. I use 1/2 cup (90g / 3 oz).

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How to make Monster Cookies

This is an easy, hand mixed cookie dough that does not need to be refrigerated before baking. So easy and so fast. How good is that!!

1. Dry ingredients – Mix the flour, oats, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl, just using a wooden spoon. Then set aside.

2. Barely melt the butter in a large microwave proof bowl, just microwave in 20 second increments until it is mostly melted but there are still butter lumps. Then finish melting by stirring, using the residual heat. It should be milky yellow, not clear and glassy. This keeps the butter cool so you can continue straight away without chilling the dough before rolling.

3. Wet ingredients – Add the rest of the Wet ingredients into the butter then mix with the wooden spoon until combined. If there’s a few pesky little peanut butter lumps, that’s more than ok – anyone for little peanut butter pockets in their cookie?? 🎉

4. Make cookie dough – Pour the Dry ingredients into the Wet ingredients bowl, then mix with the wooden spoon until the flour is mostly incorporated. Then add the chocolate chips and M&M’s (set about 1/4 cup aside for decorating the top of the cookies once baked), and mix until they are dispersed and you can no longer see flour.

5. Roll cookie balls – Roll the dough into 17 balls*, 3 tablespoons each (4.5cm / 1.8″ diameter), using a size 20 cookie scoop.

   Here’s how I do it: scoop/dollop domes onto a tray, continuing until all the cookie dough is used up. Then roll into balls and place onto paper lined trays, 7.5cm / 3″ apart. I put 6 balls on two trays and 5 on the third.

   If dough is a bit too sticky to roll, pop the bowl in the fridge for 5 minutes, it will firm up quickly.

6. Bake 2 trays at a time for 15 minutes at 180°C.350°F (160°C fan-forced), switching the tray shelves so they brown evenly. The edges should be golden and the surface should be light golden. (These cookies are a little more forgiving if cooked longer than they should be, so I encourage you to get some nice colour on the edges, so they go crispy).

7. Cool 20 minutes – Cool the cookies on the tray for 10 minutes, then transfer to a rack and cool for another 10 minutes before attacking. They will still be warm with melty chocolate, don’t worry! These cookies are a bit more fragile than typical cookies while they are warm, so you want to cool them down a bit more than usual before you enjoy them.

So there you go! A fun cookie that everybody goes mad over, from the under 7s to the over 70s, including a certain French Chef who you’d think would consider brightly coloured M&M-studded gnarly cookies beneath his refined culinary standards, but was caught sneaking cookie after cookie while expertly filleting a fish. 😂

And really, that’s what Monster Cookies are all about. They’re not elegant, they’re not sophisticated, and they certainly won’t win any beauty contests. They’re just big, chunky, chewy, chocolatey, peanut buttery cookies loaded with goodies that make people happy.

I hope they make you happy too! – Nagi x

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Watch how to make it

Life of Jaffle

I finally got Jaffle a lovely new bed. Enormous, plush, soft cushiony sofa-like walls, covered in a fluffy blanket complete with a little pillow. Basically a five star puppy hotel bed.

But he still chooses to sleep here:

Seriously. That is his favourite place to sleep, on the cold hard tiles of the shower. Night after night, I put him down on his bed then 2 seconds later he gets up and moves straight into the shower!

The only thing he does with his bed is treat it like a playroom to be destroyed every day.

Most days, the blanket mysteriously disappears off the bed but I know exactly where to find it – he’s not very creative about hiding things he steals from inside the house (and HEY! I spy my crocs!!!):

Getting the blanket back inside and where it belongs is a little harder though because obviously, it is a game! 🤣