Monster Cookies

The people who say that the last year of Engineering is ‘chill’, they lie.

For the last 5 odd months, I’ve been busy with the most obscure bunch of tasks one could imagine. Busy to the extent of not being able to bake/cook/indulge in comfort meals. Which means, that I need be in the kitchen every other day to have a fighting chance to catch up with my ‘To Cook/To Bake’ list.

Well, what can I say. You gotta do what you gotta do.

* suppresses glee*

Monster Cookies have been on my ‘To Bake’ list, as long as I can remember. Just the thought of crunchy M&M’s on a cookie spun my head round. So of course these cookies had to be the thing I broke my cooking sabbatical with.

And believe you me, the moment I bit into one of these, it took me back to the days of unsupervised Cadbury Gems Marathon and sneaky bites of Butter Cookies. I felt somewhat the same thing Kylie Minogue once did.

 

I present to you, Monster Cookies / Bejeweled Cookies.

 

Monster Cookies

 

Serves : One very sad person/ Two very happy people. (Yields 20 cookies)

Difficulty : A tad bit tricky. But if you can boil Pasta and don’t cut yourself while chopping vegetables, go ahead please.

Preparation Time : 10-12 minutes.

Cook Time : 15-20 minutes

 

Ingredients

• 2 cups of Maida
• 150 grams of Butter
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 3/4 cup of sugar
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tsp of Baking Soda
• 2 tbsp of Vanilla Essence (I used 1 Vanilla Bean)
• 1 cup of M&M’s/Cadbury Gems
• Optional –  You can sneak in some Chocolate Chips too.

 

 

As almost every other cookie recipe, we start of by creaming the butter and sugars together. (My brown sugar doesn’t look too brown because I ground them to a powder. You don’t really need to. But I’m weird that way).

 

And let that beater go. Cream Cream Cream! For about 3 odd minutes, and you get this.

 

Now, slowly nudge in the egg and the egg  yolk.

To counteract the eggy smell, splash in the vanilla essence. If the stipulated amount doesn’t seem enough to cover the egg smell, splash in some more.

I used Vanilla Seeds again. I have a huge lot of Vanilla Beans to work through. Fun bunch they are.

Yes yes, that black fungus look alike are delicious Vanilla Seeds. I swear. No, really. They are.

 

Beat it!

Till you achieve a very smooth consistency, something like this.

 

Dump in the flour and the baking soda.

 

Graduate from the beater to a large spoon or spatula. Now, slowly fold everything together till you get a sticky dough.

 

Once everything is combined (this is the best part) through in the M&M’s/Cadbury Gems apart from a few, and mix lightly till they are evenly distributed.

Now, let this dough chill in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.

 

In this mean time, pre heat your oven at 160 degrees Celsius. Prep your baking tray. Lay down butter paper on the baking tray where you’d line your cookies. Else if you are lazy and forgetful as me, you can always just butter the baking tray itself with some left over butter.

Now, remove the dough and spoon in small heaps of cookie dough at a rough distance of 2 cms from each other. These cookies have a brilliant habit of spreading once in the oven!

 

 

Now, let the cookies bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes. This time really depends on your oven and your dough, so keep checking if its done. Mine took about 20 minutes.

Once you remove these cookies, they’ll still be quite soft. So handle them carefully when you take them out, and line them up on a rack to cool for 20 odd minutes.

Once the cooling process is done, there you have them.

 

Tiny, bejeweled, delectable cookies. So pure, so innocent.

Lord knows why they were ever named Monster Cookies.