Best Confetti Cookies

Confetti cookies are the rainbow-eyed cousin of the classic chocolate chip. The dough is a textbook drop cookie: creamed butter and sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, and a teaspoon of baking soda for lift. Then in go a cup and a half of rainbow M&M-style chips, and that’s where the cookie earns its name.

The ratio favors candy. At 1.5 cups of mix-ins to 2.25 cups of flour, every bite gets a colorful crunch and a hit of milk-chocolate sweetness. The candy shells stay glossy through the bake, which is what gives these cookies their birthday-party look long after they cool.

Baking only to lightly browned edges is the move. Pull them when the centers still look slightly underdone. They keep cooking on the hot sheet for those final two minutes off the oven, and the result is soft chewy middles instead of crisp-through.

Pro Tips

• Truly soften the butter, but don’t melt it. Soft butter creams air into the sugar; melted butter creates flat, greasy cookies.
• Press a few extra rainbow chips on top of each dough ball before baking. The ones that bake into the surface look prettier than the buried ones.
• Bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack for even color. Two-rack baking gives uneven browning unless you rotate.
• Cool on the pan for the full 2 minutes before moving. The cookies are fragile when hot and can tear or break.

Variations

• Use white chocolate chips alongside the rainbow chips for a sweeter, more dessert-shop result.
• Add 1 teaspoon almond extract along with the vanilla for a sugar-cookie flavor twist.
• Roll the dough balls in sprinkles before baking for an even more festive look.