Our Chocolate M&M Christmas Cookies are festive, super delicious, easy to make, and perfect for a Holiday Party or a Christmas Cookie Exchange.

Closeup on a white platter filled with Christmas Chocolate M&M Cookies sitting in front of white tulle and Christmas Holly Berry decorations.

The Christmas Holidays are fun and special and our favorite time of year. But sometimes they can be stressful. Like those times when you are asked at the last minute to bring a dessert to a Holiday party or family gathering. If that happens to you this year, just pull out the recipe for these delicious Christmas Chocolate M&M Cookies and let your worries drift away.  These amazing cookies are both chewy and chocolate-y and with the addition of the Red and Green M&M’s they instantly become both festive and super delicious.  We really love these Chocolate M&M Christmas Cookies.  The cake-y cookies really combine well with the crunchy chocolate M&M candies. And these pretty Red and Green Christmas colors just pop off the dark chocolate cookies.  They are going to look great on the Two Sisters Dessert Table this Christmas.  Pretty, yummy and easy to make – our absolute favorite dessert combination.  Merry Christmas everyone!

How to Make the M&M Cookies

Collage image showing the steps for making the Chocolate M&M cookie dough.

Step 1: To make the chocolate cookie dough, mix together the dry ingredients (including the cocoa powder) and set them aside.  Cream together the butter and white and brown sugars.  Mix in the eggs and vanilla.  Finally, add in the dry ingredients 1 cup at a time.
Step 2: Add 3/4 of the bag of Red and Green Holiday Mix M&M’s to the chocolate cookie dough.  This is a special holiday mix of M&M’s that are available from October to December.  But you could also use the Red and Green M&M’s from a regular bag of M&M’s.

Closeup on a batch of Christmas Chocolate M&M Cookies laying on a white platter.

Step 3: Take a spoonful of cookie dough and roll it into a ball.  Press some of the left-over Red and Green M&M’s onto the cookie dough ball. This will allow some of the colorful M&M’s to show up on the top of the baked cookies.  Bake the cookies in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for 9-11 minutes.  A few of the M&M’s that are on the top of the cookies might break during the cooling process.  There is not a lot you can do about that.  It’s fine … they taste great and still look pretty!

Expert Tips and FAQ’s

Use Room Temperature Ingredients

Both the eggs and the butter should be at room temperature which will help your cookies turn out lighter and fluffier.  For the eggs, room temperature simply means not cold out of the refrigerator. If you forget to take the eggs out before you start making cookie dough you can put the eggs in a bowl of warm water for 5-10 minutes to warm them up.  The butter also needs to be softened to room temperature which means if you touch it you should leave an indentation on the stick of butter. Do not use butter that has been over-softened or melted.  If that happens you should use a different stick of butter or put it back into the refrigerator to let it set up.  We have a whole post about How to Soften Butter, click here if you need more information on how to do that.

Do you need to use a Mixer?

Yes. In our opinion, you need some kind of a mixer to make a good cookie dough. A stand mixer, while expensive, is a great investment if you believe you have a lot of homemade baked goods in your future. An electric hand-mixer also works well and you can probably find one for around $20. You can hand mix cookie dough in a pinch (which is how we did it growing up), but you will really have to use a lot of muscle to cream the butter and sugar, and eggs properly.

Cookie Dough Mixing Tips

Creaming the butter, sugar and then mixing the eggs in is the most important part of the cookie dough mixing process. Creaming is when you fully incorporate the butter and sugar together and add some much-needed air to the dough. We recommend creaming the butter and sugar for 2 minutes at medium-high speed and then mixing the butter/sugar/eggs for another 3 minutes at the same speed. Once you add the flour, you want to mix the dough as little as possible. Mix it too much and you will get tough cookies. Mix in the flour at low speed and continue mixing ONLY until the dry ingredients are incorporated into the dough. Make sure you scrape down the sides and the bottom to make sure all the flour has gotten mixed in.

Prepping the Cookie Sheet

We always line our cookie sheets with a piece of parchment paper, it keeps the cookie from sticking to the sheet and from over-browning. You can find parchment paper either in rolls or in pre-cut sheets in most grocery stores, and we highly recommend it. Ideally, you should use at least 2 cookie sheets when baking cookies. You don’t want to add the raw cookie dough to a cookie sheet that is hot out of the oven. The dough will start baking even before you get it in the oven.

Oven Tips

Everyone’s oven is different. We recommend starting with a test bake with a single cookie to help you hone in on the exact baking time for your oven. You should set your timer for 2 minutes less than whatever the recipe recommends. Once the timer goes off, open up the oven and see how your cookie is baking. Make corrections accordingly. Our oven has a hot spot in the back so we always rotate the cookie sheet halfway through the baking time to get a more even bake. Although this may seem like an unnecessary step, it is better to do this than burn a whole tray of cookies.

Storage/Freezing Tips

Cookies should always be stored in an airtight container.  They should be completely cooled before storing them. Cookies stored at room temperature should stay fresh for 3-4 days. You can also keep them in the refrigerator and that extends their freshness for up to a week. If you need them to last longer, you can freeze them for up to 3 months. You can pull them out of the freezer and leave them on the counter for 1 hour and they will be ready to eat.

Closeup on a stack of Christmas Chocolate M&M Cookies sitting on a white lace tablecloth in front of Christmas decorations.

Did you Make This Recipe? Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @twosisterscrafting on Instagram so we can see it!

And don’t forget to follow us on PinterestFacebook, and Instagram!

Christmas Chocolate M&M Cookies

Yield 3 dozen cookies
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes

Our Chocolate M&M Christmas Cookies are festive, super delicious, easy to make and perfect for a Holiday Party or a Christmas Cookie Exchange.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter (Sweet Cream, Salted)
  • 3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
  • 2/3 cup Brown Sugar (packed)
  • 2 Large Eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
  • 2 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour
  • 2/3 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
  • 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon Salt
  • 1 Bag Christmas Holiday M&M Mix

Instructions

  1. Mix dry ingredients together and set aside.
  2. Cream butter and sugars.
  3. Mix in Eggs and Vanilla.
  4. Fold in dry ingredients.
  5. Mix in 3/4 of the bag of Red and Green M&M's
  6. Roll dough into balls.
  7. Press a few of the remaining Red and Green M&M's into the ball.,
  8. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 9-11 minutes.

Did you Make this Recipe? Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @twosisterscrafting on Instagram so we can see it!