I'd never heard of monster cookies before flipping to this recipe in Baked: New Frontiers. At first, I thought the name referred to the size of the cookie, but no... monster cookies are a "Frankenstein"-type mashup of four cookies: peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip, and M&M. The concept sounded delicious, since I love peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. Could merging the three (plus M&Ms) into a single cookie yield the perfect cookie?
There were a few surprises in this cookie method. First, you start with cold butter and you barely cream together the butter and sugars, instead of the typical "cream 2-4 minutes until pale and fluffy". Second, there are a ton of eggs in the dough, almost as many as there are in the Black Forest chocolate cookies. I am guessing the eggs are required to help bind all the peanut and oats together with the rest of the ingredients. Otherwise, these are quite simple to make. (Note: As I've been doing for all the recipes published in this first cookbook from Baked, I did convert the volumes given to weights.)
These monster cookies are an exercise in delayed gratification, as once the dough is mixed together, it needs to rest for at least 5 hours in the refrigerator. (Also, they aren't reat warm from the oven.) Happily, unlike those Black Forest chocolate cookies, this dough is really easy to scoop, even after spending a full day chilling. So, plan ahead a little, but otherwise, minimal effort is needed here.
My one critique of these cookies is they start to brown quite deeply on the tops before they are actually baked through. The recipe instructions say they are done when they begin to brown, so I took my first two baking sheets out after 10 min because they looked & smelled done, but they weren't actually cooked through in the middle. Due to the substantial amount of oats in these cookies, these don't spread in the oven, which means the surface area exposed to the heat is really limited to the domed tops. The instructions do note a baking time of 12-15 minutes, so about 12-13 minutes is what I used for the remaining dough balls.
Using a standard ice cream scoop (with a release arm), I wound up with 50 cookies, rather than the stated 36, which is really a huge number of cookies. If you're looking for a quick weeknight cookie recipe, you'll want to only bake about a quarter to half the dough and save the rest for another day. I've taken these monster cookies to a few different parties, traveled with them to Mexico, and tipped one to a Lyft driver; I haven't met a soul yet who doesn't like these. I'm not saying they're my very favorite cookie, or even in my top ten of cookies, but they're still delicious and a fun variation of cookie to eat occasionally.
In my humble opinion, these are just okay, but really nothing special, when eaten warm from the oven. (Also, they're quite crumbly while warm). These monster cookies are much better after they've cooled completely. The cookies themselves are soft and tender, and the mash-up of flavors is well-balanced. Head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what the other bakers thought.
