Big and Soft M&M Cookies

 Besides my carpet (yay!!) and sleep (always), my favorite thing right now is my yard. We kinda live out there. We finally planted our teeny garden today; it's almost June, so we should be done with snow at this point, right??

Three tomato plants, two rows of carrots and two rows of green beans. If I can keep them alive, we'll expand next year. This is my test. We're soaking in these gorgeous spring-slash-summer evenings, because any day now it's going to get hot and dry, and the wonder of having a backyard has yet to wear off. A space big enough to exercise the Beast, with a frisbee or a ball, and actually wear her out without having to put on shoes, is pretty awesome. Because yes, I am lazy. Therefore, so is she. And she could stand to lose a few pounds. Me too, but that's what smoothies and my treadmill are for. Backyards are for lilacs and breezes and fetch and frisbee!

Turns out the boys are pretty good at frisbee! They sure picked it up faster than I ever did. (PS- The yard will be even nicer when we get rid of that cement slab. Yuck.)

 Action shoooooooot!!!

Joe takes frisbee, as with all activities involving hand eye coordination, very seriously. He even got some air on that one!! And after playing that hard, I think two cookies for dessert is totally justified, don't you?

Big and Soft M&M Cookies (adapted from A Pinch of Yum)
Printable Recipe

1 cup packed brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
1 cup shortening (I used butter flavored. Real butter will make the cookies flat and crispy)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour, plus 2-4 Tablespoons
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1½ cups M&M's

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine sugars and shortening and beat on medium-low until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. Whisk the 1 1/2 cups of flour, salt, and baking soda together in a seperate bowl, then add to the butter mixture. Mix until just combined. Add the extra flour, one tablespoon at a time, until the dough feels stiff and almost dry. Shouldn't be sticky at all. Stir 1 cup of the M&M's into the dough.

Roll into large balls, like walnut to pingpong ball-sized, and press extra M&M's into the tops (for prettiness, of course!) Flatten each ball slightly with your palm or a wooden spoon. Bake for 10-12 minutes , until the edges or ridges on top just BARELY brown. They will still look underdone. Gently remove from cookie sheet right away and place on cooling rack. Let cool completely before serving, to help the cookies keep their shape. 

Okay, so, I somehow missed the extra couple of tablespoons of flour in the original recipe. Oops. So they should be even thicker and more awesome. Even without, they were pretty great!! I know some of you will see shortening and immediately think "Ew, why can't I use butter??", and I totally get it, that's exactly what I thought. But we're going for thick, chewy, and soft, and if you substitute butter, they will flatten and get crispy-chewy, which is completely different. Not what this recipe is going for. Though completely yummy, in it's place!

The boys, of course, adored these. What is it about M&M's? Why are they so much more exciting than chocolate chips? They're certainly prettier, but I think Stephen's observation says it perfectly. "You know, I bet you could do this with any candy. Like Skittles!!" Chocolate chips are just chocolate chips. But M&M's are candy. You have a cookie with candy in it!! Life doesn't get much more exciting.

Be not afraid of the not-quite-doneness, they turn out soft, sweet, and scrumptious. And because I used butter-flavored shortening, buttery too!! A cookie jar or lunchbox classic.