You’ve officially found the BEST M&M cookie recipe! My soft and chewy M&M cookies are easy (NO mixer!) and have the prettiest cookie tops. Recipe includes a how-to video!
The Best M&M Cookie Recipe
I’ve got a fun and colorful M&M cookie recipe for you today! These M&M cookies are so easy to make and are great for baking with kids. You’ll love the simple and flavorful cookie base (it’s very similar to my best chocolate chip cookie recipe!) and how well it works with the crunchy M&M candies. This one definitely deserves a place in your recipe book!
This recipe would be perfect any holiday; just switch up the classic colored M&Ms with the holiday version for simple and crowd-pleasing Christmas cookies or Easter cookies. It doesn’t get much easier than that 😊
What you’ll love about my recipe:
- No mixer required: these can be made by hand, thanks to melted butter.
- Bakery-style finish: I’m sharing my favorite tip for the prettiest cookie tops!
- Can be made in advance: Chill for a few days, or freeze for months.
- Simple: Just 11 ingredients!
What You Need
My M&M cookie recipe uses staple ingredients you should already have in your pantry. Here are a few of the important ones:
- Melted butter. Many cookie recipes call for you to cream softened butter into sugar. There’s nothing wrong with this technique, but I’ve found that creaming butter and sugar leads to cakier cookies, while using melted butter yields chewier, softer cookies that are more buttery and flavorful. Ever since first using this technique with my chocolate chip cookie recipe, it’s become a default for most of the cookie recipes I share, including today’s M&M cookie recipe!
- Brown sugar. I use light brown sugar, but you can use dark brown or even a blend of the two.
- Cornstarch. I love using cornstarch in cookies to keep them soft and prevent them from spreading too much in the oven. While you could leave it out, I highly recommend including it.
- Egg + egg yolk. That extra egg yolk also helps with softness and chewiness–don’t skip it!
SAM’S TIP: Set aside a handful of M&Ms to press into to the tops of your cookies when they come out of the oven. This will give them that bakery-style M&M cookie appearance!
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make M&M Cookies
- Combine the melted butter and sugars, then stir in the eggs and vanilla.
- Mix together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then gradually add them to the wet ingredients.
- Stir in the M&Ms until evenly incorporated.
- Cover the dough and let it chill for at least 45 minutes.
- Scoop and roll the dough into balls before placing them onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
- Bake for 10-11 minutes, then let the cookies cool completely on their sheet before enjoying.
SAM’S TIP: Your cookies should look slightly underdone when you pull them out of the oven; this is intentional! We’ll let them finish cooking outside the oven on the cookie sheet. This guarantees our M&M cookies will stay soft after long they’ve cooled.
Frequently Asked Questions
While they should spread some, your cookies shouldn’t be super flat. This can happen if you add your butter while it’s still too hot. Melted butter that’s too hot can actually melt the sugar and will give you a greasy, runny cookie dough that will never hold its shape in the oven, no matter how long you chill it.
On the other hand, if your cookies aren’t spreading enough, it could be that you’ve over-measured your flour. Read my post on how to measure flour so this doesn’t happen in the future!
Yes! Just make sure to cover it with plastic wrap.
You can also freeze this M&M cookie recipe. Simply wrap each cookie (raw or baked) in plastic wrap and freeze in a ziploc bag or airtight container.
Absolutely. These would be delicious with peanut butter M&Ms or even mint M&Ms–yum!
Candy and cookies–whats not to like?!
Enjoy!
Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
M&M Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until no longer warm to the touch
- 1 ¼ cup (250 g) brown sugar* tightly packed
- ½ cup (100 g) sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk room temperature preferred*
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 ¾ cups (340 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups (315 g) M&Ms
Instructions
- Combine melted butter and sugars in a large bowl and stir until well-combined.1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until no longer warm to the touch, 1 ¼ cup (250 g) brown sugar* tightly packed, ½ cup (100 g) sugar
- Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract and stir well.1 large egg + 1 egg yolk room temperature preferred*, 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- In a separate, medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.2 ¾ cups (340 g) all-purpose flour, 1 Tablespoon cornstarch, ¾ teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon baking powder, ¾ teaspoon salt
- Gradually add dry ingredients to wet and mix until combined.
- Use a spatula to stir M&M candies into the cookie dough1 ½ cups (315 g) M&Ms
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and transfer to the refrigerator to chill for at least 45 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
- Once oven has preheated, remove your chilled cookie dough from the fridge and roll dough into approximately 2 Tablespoon-sized scoops. Roll gently to form a ball and place on prepared cookie sheet (space cookies at least 2" apart).
- Bake on 350F (175C) for 10-11 minutes, centers of the cookies may still seem slightly underbaked — allow cookies to cool completely on cookie sheet to finish cooking there, this will help keep them nice and soft.
Notes
Storing
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Lisa Wilf
Cookies are yummy but they look nothing like the cookies in the video. Perhaps I cooked them too long.
Sam
Hi Lisa! What did they look like?
lisa wilf
Hi – should I change the cooking time if I use a 1 Tbsp. scoop? Thanks!
Sam
Hi Lisa! Your cookies will be smaller so they will require less time in the oven. 🙂
Laura
I have made several of your cookie recipes and always love them, until this one. I questioned the brown sugar from the start and wish I had gone with my gut, I was after that amazing M&M sugar cookie I used to beg for when we went to the mall and this definitely was not that. To begin with: I use a scale to measure all ingredients, all my ingredients are fresh and room temp, the butter is done the way you say (I’ve used this method before, those cookies turned out perfect and I loved them), and chilled for over 2r hours. The only thing I did different was used salted butter. I did add more flour at the end because they were still way too sticky and wet, not the texture they needed to be. The cookies all ran together and the pan was coated in butter!! I always scoop with a 1/4 cup scoop because I like them thicker than most, I use a cookie mat on a dark pan that I use with all my cookies, as I said I’ve used your recipes before and loved them. What happened here?
Sam
Hi Laura! This is frustrating, and certainly bizarre. My first thought would be that the butter was too hot, but it sounds like you are familiar with letting it cool enough so the only thing I can imagine is that an ingredient was accidentally mis-measured (the salted butter would not be the problem, just to confirm only one cup/2 sticks/226 grams of butter was used, correct?).
The ratios in this recipe are comparable to (if not identical to) the ones that I use in many of my other cookie recipes (and the brown sugar wouldn’t cause this, either), so I think this is a simple matter of accidental mis-measuring, unfortunately. The video gives a good idea of what the dough should look like and as you can see it’s quite different from what you described (and I have not had anyone else describe this issue, in the comments you can see most people have had success with the recipe). I would recommend giving them another shot and I think you’ll have much better results (and please let me know how it turns out if you do!), but how frustrating for sure 🙁
Nate Renninger
I’ve made these at least 3 times over the last year and they have turned out perfect. Trust me, if they didn’t turn out for you it’s not Sam’s fault. You did something wrong. I saw this rating and comment and felt like I needed to defend Sugar Spun Run. As a small business owner myself, I have gotten reviews that aren’t fair or unwarranted. It happens. Then when you resolve/disprove the issue, the negative review/comments stay on your site for eternity. You should take down your poor review. It’s not Sam’s fault when we mis-measure, use baking soda instead or baking powder, or burn something. Think about it. Put yourself in her shoes. This isn’t just a hobby to her, it’s her livelihood. Rating matter. This is a bomb recipe. Try it again. You won’t be disappointed. I got your back Sam! Sorry not sorry…;)
Christina
Do these cookies freeze well? Won’t be needing them for 6 days from now and I wanted to make them ahead of time!
Sam
Hi Christina! They should be fine to freeze. 🙂
Jada
Hi, I tried this delicious M&M cookies recipe yesterday. And it was yummy. I was wondering next time if I can trade out the M&M’s for sprinkles ?
Thankyou for sharing all your recipes 😊
Sam
I am so glad you enjoyed them so much, Jada! Yes you can use sprinkles instead. 🙂
Rebecca
Hi Sam, I wanted to ask if you thought brown butter would work for this recipe? Looks fantastic! Thanks!
Sam
Hi Rebecca! It should work here. When you brown it though you cook out a little bit of the moisture so that may be something to try to account for when making the cookies. 🙂
Liza
What a yummy m&m cookie recipe! This is second Sugar Spun Run recipe that has knocked it out of the park with my family. (The first one is the homemade biscuit recipe!)
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you so much, Liza! I am so glad that everyone enjoyed the cookies. 🙂
Krysti K Vogel
Wondering why you use cornstarch along with the flour in a lot of your recipes?
Sam
Hi Krysti! The cornstarch really helps with the texture here. It makes for a nice soft chewy cookie that’s not cakey. 🙂
Veda
Can we use granulated sugar instead of brown sugar?
Sam
Hi Veda! You can use granulated sugar, but it will change the flavor and texture a bit. They also won’t be quite as moist. 🙂
Jen
Hi! I’m a huge fan of your giant chocolate chip cookies. I’d like to make giant M&M ones as well—can I use this recipe and scoop it into 1/2 cup balls or do I need to alter ingredients?
Thanks so much!
Sam
Hi Jen! Sometimes if I try to do that they don’t bake quite right, but it may end up working for you. I have a giant chocolate chip cookie recipe that you could add M & Ms to. 🙂
Maisy
Best cookies ever my family loved them!
Sam
I am so glad everyone enjoyed them so much, Maisy! 🙂
wendy
best recipe. this was my first time measuring using the scale and they came out perfect!!!! thank you!!!
Sam
I am so glad you enjoyed them so much, Wendy! 🙂
Carol Hunter
Absolutely the best M&M cookie ever!!
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you so much, Carol! I am so glad that you enjoyed them. 🙂
Kara
Very confused! I’ve been baking for years and just recently decided I wanted to try out a new type of m and m cookie. I saw this one, read the reviews and decided it looked great. I followed the recipe to a T and the dough tasted delicious, however when I started rolling the cookies into small balls I noticed the dough wasn’t very sticky as the m&ms were falling out and even the dough barely held together . I was a bit confused, but kept going. I then put them in the oven for 9 minutes, and it didn’t even look like they were cooked! I kept adding minutes on, but they still hardly even spread out. I have no clue what I did wrong.
Sugar Spun Run
Oh no, Kara! I am so sorry that you’re experiencing issues with your cookie dough. If the M&M’s are falling out and your dough seems to be on the drier side, this is the result of too much flour being added to the batter. This is the most common mistake in baking so I have created a guide on how to measure flour properly that can be used as a reference for next time. As far as your cookies being undercooked in the center your cookies may need an extra minute or two in the oven. This recipe has a video that I would reference as well. In the video, I will walk you through my process and you can see how your dough compares. I hope that helps.
Dianna J
Does this dough chill in the fridge or freezer? In step 6 you mention the fridge, but in step 8 you mention the freezer. Thanks!
Sam
Whoops, just the fridge! Thanks for bringing that to my attention, Dianna, I will get that fixed.