Candy & Cake Batter Sprinkle Cookies

I pinned a Cake Batter Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction the other day and knew I needed to make these gorgeous treats, however, I wanted to change them up just a little bit. I wanted them BIGGER and I wanted M&Ms in them instead of the white chocolate chips. For the kids, of course. Of course. Sally’s method for making thicker cookies intrigued me and I wanted to test it out to see if it really worked.

Here’s what I used to make these awesome treats:

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup vanilla boxed cake mix
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup M&Ms
1/2 cup sprinkles

In a large bowl, combine the flour, cake mix and baking soda.

In another bowl, cream together the sugars and butter.

Mix in the egg and vanilla until it’s smooth and creamy.

Add the creamed mixture to the dry mixture and pour in the chocolate chips, M&Ms and sprinkles.

Now mix everything together. I used a hand mixer because I don’t have a full-size mixer. Who has room on their countertops for one of those? For those of you who have them, where in the world do you put them?

Make sure you don’t overdo it on the mixing. Just beat the dough until everything is folded together. Now chill the dough for at least one hour. This will also help create a thicker cookie.

After the dough is chilled, get out your baking pans and spray them with non-stick cooking spray. This is the part of Sally’s recipe that intrigued me. She calls it the “tall” cookie dough trick. You can ready more about it here. She says that if you make basically a tower rather than a ball you’re going to reduce the cookie’s spreading, resulting in a thicker cookie. I believe she used about a tablespoon of dough for each cookie. I did two tablespoons because I wanted a larger cookie.

This is how the cookies looked after 12 minutes of baking at 350 degrees when I pulled them out of the oven.

After four minutes, remove them from the pan onto a cooling rack. This is where my photo shoot ended for the night. I waited until morning to take photos of the finished cookies because natural light is your friend when it comes to food photography.

So, between the evening and the morning, we enjoyed a few cookies and I ended up getting the camera back out again to take a few more shots in the natural light. I asked my hubby if he thought the cookies looked too pale now that I took them out of the artificial light. He just rolled his eyes at me. So I decided to just go with it. Not many of us here in the Midwest have tans in the dead of winter anyway, so why should a cookie?

Don’t forget to pour yourself a nice glass of milk to go with this scrumptious treat.

And for goodness sakes, don’t eat just one. Eat two or three. Just ask your kids if they think I’m right. I’m right. These are so colorful and so much fun. They’re the perfect cookie for birthdays and holidays. Hold that thought. They’re the perfect cookie any ole’ time. Thank you to Sally for her “tall” dough baking tip. We will be enjoying these all week!