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I had my two littles this past weekend.  Just Momma and the boys. Make no mistake, my 11-year-old sincerely wishes I would stop referring to him as one of “the littles”. Which is probably fair, since he is nearly my height. I, on the other hand, will be dragging that out until he’s 30.

Here’s what happens when I have any cross-section of the boys on my own:  It is cause for a weekend of delicious, but completely unhealthy, food.  We rent a movie, grab some sausage/pepp/double cheese pizza from our fave spot, and make cookies.

Like these. Because all of my boys (especially the biggest one) love chocolate and peanut butter.  My tiniest human is also a HUGE fan of “num-nums”.  Otherwise known as M&Ms, and, I think, very aptly renamed.

There is one accidentally glorious addition to this recipe.  Several years back, when I encountered a shortage of chocolate chips in my pantry, I decided to substitute butterscotch chips.  Look, a girl’s gotta work with what she’s got.

Here’s the deal – it has become the thing that gets noticed in these cookies.

Who knew? Butterscotch. That ingredient we all forget we secretly love.

 

monster cookies

These couldn’t be easier to toss together. Cream together the butter, peanut butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar. If you are like me, you should also talk yourself out of stopping here and just eating out of the bowl. On a completely side note – I do have another cookie recipe that is basically this mixture rolled in almond bark.  So eating this is absolutely a risk.

Good way to make this less appealing?  Add the eggs and vanilla and combine.

In a separate bowl, toss together your dry ingredients.  I say “sift” in the recipe, but that’s a super loose term in my house.  For pretty much every batch of cookies I have ever made, a fork toss of any flour mixture works like a charm.

When your flour, oats, salt, baking powder and soda are well incorporated, mmonster cookiesix them in with your wet ingredients.  Let the whole mixture just come together.  These cookies should be nice and soft when they come out of the oven, and overmixing them will cause them to harden. This is also why I advise adding your chips and M&Ms with a spoon.

Use a tablespoon or other spoon to scoop rounds onto cookie sheet prepared with parchment.  These can be sticky little suckers, and I don’t want you to be cursing me out for the mess that is now your kitchen.

They don’t need a ton of baking time. Approximately 9 min at 350 degrees, and you should be good to go.  They will still look quite soft.  If you take them out of the oven and let them sit on the warm cookie sheet for another few minutes, the cookies will solidify just enough that they still are gooey and awesome, but not overcooked.

Move them to a cooling rack or counter, and try to resist the urge to belly up with a glass of milk.