Sweet and Salty Cookies

Are you a fan of the Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel? If yes, then get ready to be excited because they just announced their Christmas in July movie schedule!

I’m a total sucker for Christmas movies, so rest assured that I’ll be catching most of them next month. Who am I kidding? I’m sure I’ll watch them all even if I’ve seen them ten times. With Christmas on the brain, I thought I’d whip up some cookies. You know, because cookies are THE thing to bake at Christmas time. Yes, this is me trying to justify making cookies right now when I should be skipping them in order to get ready for bathing suit season. 😉

I took the standard issue chocolate chip cookie recipe and swapped out the chocolate chips for M&Ms and pretzels. You can certainly use chocolate chips instead of M&Ms if that’s what you have handy, but I thought the colorful M&Ms added a nice summer-y touch and apparently I have a thing about making chocolate chip cookies with M&Ms instead.

I tried to get a good close up of the cookie dough to give you an idea of what the texture of the cookie batter should look like. For every single cookie I make, I touch the dough to make sure that it’s sticky but doesn’t stick to my finger. Seriously, every… single… cookie I do this. That’s the texture you want to avoid it from spreading or being too dried out when it bakes. I almost always have my husband double check me on the texture but this time he wasn’t home and I had no choice but to imagine him explaining the desired texture (again) and believing in myself. I can be taught, eventually.

You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but these cookies are ginormous. That’s the way my hubby likes them. He always says, “Go big or go home.” I can’t disagree with him, especially when it comes to cookies. Bigger really is better.

If you want to scale down the cookie size to a “normal” size cookie, uhm, why would you? Just kidding, sort of. I’ve included the bake time for smaller cookies in the directions too.

If you need me during the week in July when the Hallmark channel Christmas movies are on the air, I’ll be on the couch watching them with a glass of cold milk and cookies. Maybe not these cookies though because they’ll be gone by then (WAY before then).

Sweet and Salty Cookies Recipe
(Makes 18 ginormous cookies)

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour (equivalent to 12.6 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter (equivalent to 1 and 1/2 sticks)
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup M&Ms
1 cup roughly broken pretzels

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set the dry ingredients aside.
Cream the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar. (Whip them until they are fluffy.)
Mix in the vanilla extract.
Mix in the eggs.
Gradually mix in the dry ingredients.
Stir in the M&Ms and broken pretzels.
Line a baking sheet with a silicon mat or parchment paper.
Using a 1/4 measuring cup full of dough for each cookie, scoop out dough, form into a ball, then slightly flatten it with the bottom of the measuring cup. (See note below if you want to bake smaller cookies.)
Bake them 4 to 6 to a tray in the preheated oven for about 13 minutes or until slightly browned on the edges.
Let them rest for about 3 minutes and transfer them to a cooling rack.

Note: To bake smaller sized cookies, I used the Medium Oxo cookie scoop (which is equivalent to 1 heaping tablespoon). Bake for about 8 minutes or until slightly browned on the edges.

Adapted from: Nestle Toll House

Rating: