Holiday Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

These oatmeal cookies pull double duty at the holiday cookie swap. Both chocolate chips and M&Ms get folded into a classic brown-sugar oat dough, which means you get the deep cocoa flavor of melting semisweet chocolate plus the bright colors and crunchy candy shells that pop against the tan cookie surface. They photograph beautifully for gift tins and Instagram.

The recipe gives you a choice that most cookie recipes don’t make explicit. Eight to 10 minutes gives you a chewy center cookie with crisp edges. Ten to 12 minutes gives you a more uniformly crisp cookie that holds up to dunking in milk or coffee. Pick your camp. The brown-sugar-to-white-sugar ratio (1 cup to ½ cup) favors chewy, so even the longer bake leaves these softer than a pure-white-sugar cookie would.

Pro Tips

• Use rolled oats, not quick or instant. Rolled oats give the cookies their substantial chew. Quick oats turn the texture too soft.
• Add the M&Ms by hand at the end. Beating them into the dough cracks the candy shells and bleeds color into the dough.
• Press a few extra chocolate chips or M&Ms on top of each cookie ball before baking for picture-perfect cookies with visible candy on top.
• Pull from oven when edges are golden but centers still look underdone. Carryover heat finishes the bake and keeps the centers tender.

Variations

• Swap M&Ms for crushed peppermint candy canes for a Christmas-only version with festive red flecks.
• Add a half cup of chopped pecans or walnuts for nutty crunch.
• Use seasonal pastel M&Ms in spring or themed colors for Halloween, Easter, and Valentine’s bakes.