Monster Cookies: These chewy monster cookies are made with oats, chocolate chips, M&M’s, and a few other staple ingredients, making them the best monster cookies ever!
Quick Overview: Preheat oven to 350° and bake for 12-14 minutes. Middles will be soft and chewy and outside edges will have a slight crisp!
Why you’ll love this recipe
There are a lot of different ways to make classic cookies like a chocolate chip cookie. Some give you crunchy cookies, some give you fudge cookies, some make cake-like cookies…
This monster cookies recipe gives you a cookie that’s chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside (those are the best cookies, in my opinion). It’s the best monster cookie recipe there is; it’s basically peanut butter oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips and extra m&m in them…yum!
If these cookies have too many mix-ins for you, I also love topping sugar cookies with simple whipped cream.
Jump to:
What is monster cookie made of?
It’s always a good idea to gather your ingredients before you start baking (to make sure you aren’t missing anything). This is what you’ll need to make your monster cookies.
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 ½ cups quick-cooking oats *
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup chocolate chips
- ½ cup chocolate M&Ms (or mini M&M)
- ½ cup salted butter softened at room temperature
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 ¼ cup creamy peanut butter *
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Optional: 1 ½ tablespoon cookie scoop (Oxo or similar)
How to make monster cookies
- Heat oven to 350 F.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon mat.
- In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients (flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt). Mix well.
Quick cooking oats are the best ones to use in this recipe. You can use old fashioned oats, but they will change the texture of the cookie and make it a lot more chewy.
- Add the chocolate chips and the M&M chocolate candies to the flour mixture. Mix until they are coated. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer or hand mixer to mix butter and sugar together on medium speed (you can also do this with a stand mixer). Mix until it’s combined and you have a thick dough.
- Add the peanut butter and mix on low speed until combined
You can use either creamy peanut butter or chunky peanut butter for this recipe, but natural peanut butter/nut butters don’t work very well.
- Add the eggs, one at the time, mixing in between each one.
- Next add about ⅓ of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Mix until the flour is all incorporated. Repeat until all the flour is mixed into the wet ingredients. You will have a thick dough.
- Take a cookie scoop and scoop 1 ½ tablespoons of dough into a ball. Place the balls of dough on the prepared cookie sheets leaving 1 ½ to 2-inch space in between them as they will spread. Place a couple M&Ms on top of the cookie to make it look pretty, if you like.
You can use an ice cream scoop instead of a smaller scoop, but that will result in giant monster cookies and you will need to adjust the baking time (they will need to bake longer than the recipe says- watch them closely to see when they are done).
- Bake in the preheated oven for 12-14 minutes until the edges are set and the cookie is golden brown. The middle will still be soft as these are thick cookies, but keep in mind they will continue to firm up as they cool.
- Leave the cookie on the pan for 3 to 4 minutes then transfer to a wire rack.
- Enjoy your chewy monster cookies!
Variations
You could play around with the type of candy and chocolate pieces you add into this recipe to create a totally different cookie with the same yummy peanut butter cookie base!
- Christmas monster cookies – add in red and green M&Ms to make these super festive and fun!
- Fancy -instead of milk chocolate chips, add in ¼ cup of white chocolate chips and ¼ cup of dark chocolate chips!
- Peanut butter monster cookies– if you want to play up the peanut butter flavor in this cookie, try replacing the chocolate chips with ¼ cup of butterscotch chips and ¼ cup of peanut butter chips. You could also replace the M&Ms with Reese Pieces!
- Monster mash – if you want to turn these into Halloween cookies, you can replace the M&Ms with orange and black seasonal ones OR try using candy corn instead of M&Ms (we haven’t tried this, but it sounds tasty)!
No matter what you add into it, this monster cookie recipe is the best recipe to whip up for after-school snack, that bake sale, or just because!
Equipment
To get 46 cookies from this recipe, we used a 1 ½ tablespoon cookie scoop like this one (size medium).
You could also use a tablespoon and get a heaping scoop for each dough ball, or an ice cream scoop (but if it makes larger dough balls you will need to let it cook a bit longer).
Storage
Keep them in an airtight container at room temperature for 4 to 5 days or in the fridge for up to 1 week.
FAQs
Yes! You can freeze the uncooked dough.
I like to form them into a ball, freeze them for 20 minutes on a plate lined with parchment paper then put them into a plastic freezer bag or freezer safe container. Doing it this way they all freeze individually, and it is easier for me to pick only a few out when I am ready to cook them.
You can store these dough balls in the freezer for up to 6 weeks (which is perfect if you want to be able to whip up fresh cookies for company in mere minutes- just pop these in the oven and voila!).
You have two options for baking frozen dough balls…
1. You put them on the prepared baking sheet and let them thaw, then you cook them as the recipe states, or
2. You lower the oven temperature by 15°, put the frozen dough on the prepared baking sheet and bake it for 3-5 minutes longer than the recipe says (watching closely at the end to see when they are done).
This really depends on the recipe. Some recipes call for refrigeration of the dough because it helps the cookies hold their shape.
As a general rule, cold dough won’t spread as much as room temperature dough will. If you refrigerate this monster cookie dough, you can choose to bake it from chilled or let it warm back up to room temperature before baking.
*Note: You don’t have to adjust the baking time for dough that is cold from the fridge, ONLY for frozen dough.
Expert Tips
This recipe makes a LOT of cookies, which is a good thing because chewy chocolate cookies are basically everyone’s favorite type of cookie!
Freeze some dough for later OR package these cookies up nicely and give them as a gift to your friends and neighbours!
Related Recipes
If you’re looking for other yummy dessert recipes that can feed a crowd, check out these strawberry cheesecake cookies and these Double Tree Chocolate Chip Cookies!
Recipe
Chewy Monster Cookies
Equipment
- 1 ½ tablespoon cookie scoop (Oxo or similar)
Ingredients
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 ½ cups quick-cooking oats *
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup chocolate chips
- ½ cup chocolate M&Ms
- ½ cup salted butter softened at room temperature
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 ¼ cup creamy peanut butter *
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 F.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon mat.
- In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients (flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt). Mix well.
- Add the chocolate chips and the M&Ms to the flour mixture. Mix until they are coated. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer or hand mixer to mix butter and sugar together on medium speed (you can also do this with a stand mixer). Mix until it's combined and you have a thick dough.
- Add the peanut butter and mix on low speed until combined
- Add the eggs, one at the time, mixing in between each one.
- Add about ⅓ of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Mix until the flour is all incorporated. Repeat until all the flour is mixed into the wet ingredients. You will have a thick dough.
- Take a cookie scoop and scoop 1 ½ tablespoons of dough into a ball. Place the balls of dough on the prepared baking sheet leaving 1 ½ to 2-inch space in between them as they will spread. You can use an ice cream scoop instead of a smaller scoop, but that will result in larger cookies and you will need to adjust the baking time until they look fully cooked.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 12-14 minutes until the edges are set and the cookie is golden brown. The middle will still be soft as these are thick cookies, but keep in mind they will continue to firm up as they cool.
- Leave the cookie on the pan for 3 to 4 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.
- Enjoy your chewy monster cookies!
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes and more.
Amy says
These cookies are the best monster cookies I have made in a long time! thank you for sharing this recipe
Jessica says
That’s wonderful to hear, Amy! Thank you so much for letting us know you liked these monster cookies too!
Eden says
These were such a hit!! Made them with my kids and we all loved them, can’t wait to make them again!
Jessica says
Awww, such a perfect activity and recipe to make with the kids. So glad you liked them, thank you!
wilhelmina says
This recipe made perfect monster cookies! Five stars all the way!
Jessica says
I’m so glad to hear that the monster cookies worked for you! Thank you for sharing!