PLEASE NOTE: At culinary school the first thing we learned about cookie making is that when you beat the butter/shortening the friction heats it up the dough. While incorporating the ingredients better it also breaks down the fat in the product. To correct this all you need to do is refrigerate you dough for about 5 minutes before baking. Doing so will re-solidify the fats and stop your cookies from over spreading. This is the base cookie recipe I use for chocolate chip and other cookies, except I use either butter or half shortnenting and half butter. It just depends on the product I am making. You will see a HUGE difference if you try this procedure, guaranteed.
Best cookies EVERR! Instead of shortening I used 2 sticks of butter and they came out PERFECT! I also didnt use so much salt and baked for a few minutes longer. Adding extra m&ms didnt hurt either! YUM!
After reading all the other reviews, I made this using a 1/2 cup of room temp butter and 1/2 cup butter flavored shortening. They spread slightly on the pan, but not a whole lot, and they had a great flavor. Also, for my oven, a bake time of 8 1/2 minutes got them pretty well baked, and then I let them sit on the pan for an additional 4 minutes, finishing it up. Perfect. I also made a batch of Chocolate Mint M & M cookies by adding a 1/2 cup cocoa to the batter and using candy covered mint pieces. Heavenly.
WOW! I just made these cookies and they turned out great! I made them with butter only and they turned out just fine. Thanks for such a great recipie!
Oh My Gosh!!! I have been looking for a recipe like this for YEARS - just like the cookies I used to get at a shop when I was a kid. These were delicious - a little crispy, a little chewy. I used unsalted butter and next time may reduce the sugar a bit. I thought 3/4 c M&M added to the batter was a little light, so I added a full cup. Well, the mixer smashed them up so next time I will mix them in by hand. Also, will only put 3/4 c in as written; I realized that since you push M&Ms onto the cookies once they are on the sheet, you can control how many candies are in each cookie anyways. Definitely, absolutely a KEEPER!
These cookies are fantastic. There are a lot of people giving negative reviews for flat cookies. Unfortunately they aren't educated enough in baking to know when mostly brown sugar is used the cookies tend to be more flat. Which is why you need to use shortening to make up for that. Butter melts faster and therefore makes cookies spread more. I used half butter flavor shortening and half real butter simply for my own tastes not out of necessity. The other thing is chilling the cookie dough for at least 24 hours will enhance the flavor of the cookies and also make the dough easier to work with. Used my tablespoon cookie scoop to make even cookies. I also prefer my cookies slightly under baked so I only cooked them for 8 min. each. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for at least 3 min. otherwise they are too fragile to move. Then transferred to a cookie rack. Also keep in mind if cooling on the cookie sheet there will be carry over cooking which can make the cookies crispier. Thanks for a great recipe! Will be used over and over in this household.
I love this recipe. I do not use shortening. I use 2 sticks of butter and I also add semi-sweet chocolate chips. This makes for really good cookies! I have made these every week for my kids lunch and they love them. I am surprised at how many cookies it makes up! Just for fun...I made 1/8 tsp balls and it made cookies the size of those 100 calorie cookies. My two year old did not waste any cookie, because it was the right size! I counted 130 small cookies thats not counting the ones we ate from each batch out of the oven!
This recipe falls far short of spectacular! It tastes like store-bought cookies...so, not good. Try substituting butter for shortening - something I realized I should have done after I'd already made the fatal error of using shortening, which is rarely a good cookie ingredient...what was I thinking?
KID NOTE: My son thinks they taste good, but he's a toddler and doesn't have the most refined palate as yet.
DH LOVED these cookies! I used butter instead of shortening.
The cookies flattened out a lot after I took them out of the oven and were sitting on the pan so I added more flour (about 1/4 cup) to the batter and the rest turned out awesome!
