Recipe: Chocolate Peanut M&M Cookies

I love peanut M&M's and brought a pouch of them a couple of months back intent on creating some sort of recipe with them. And then I completely forgot about them, until I ran out of Mini Eggs to squeeze in one last Easter recipe and couldn't find any anywhere. That's when I remembered I had these. Pair that with my urge to make cookies, it turned out to be a match made in heaven. With these cookies you get that delicious chocolately goodness that has a nutty, crunch in every other bite. I'd like to say that I really enjoyed making these but considering my stand mixer broke halfway through and I'm still waiting to hear back about my warranty, I have to say there have been many more recipes I've enjoyed making more.

Ingredients 
- 150g Salted Butter, softened
- 80g Light Brown Muscavado Sugar
- 80g Granulated Sugar
- 2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 Egg
- 225g Plain Flour
- 30g Cocoa Powder
- 1/2 Tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda
- 1/4 Tsp Salt
- 140g Peanut M&M's

Method 
1- Pre heat your oven to 180C. Line several baking trays with greaseproof paper/baking parchment.
2- Into a bowl place the softened butter, granulated and muscavado sugar. Beat until smooth and creamy, taking care to beat out any lumps of sugar as you go.
3- Add your vanilla extract and egg then beat again. I always take this point as an opportunity to scrape around the sides of the bowl so you don't have any mixture unincorporated.
4- Sieve the cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and plain flour into the bowl. If you're using a stand mixer I always advise taking the bowl off for this part. It saves a lot of time and hassle and you should hopefully have less to clear up afterwards.
5- Beat everything until completely combined. It may look like it's not going to become anything but just give it time and you'll end up with a delicious looking cookie dough that you'll want to eat before you even cook it.
6- Add your M&M's and beat again until they're fully incorporated.
7- Now it's time to shape your cookies. There are two ways you can go about doing this, firstly you can do it with your hands but it's gets very sticky very quickly. Or secondly you could use a batter scoop to scoop out an equal amount of dough so that your cookies may not all end up being circular, they will be all the same size. Evenly place your balls of cookie dough on the trays so they have room to drop and expand as they cook.
8- Once you've filled your trays; usually around three for me, pop them in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or until the edges are slightly firm. I recommend keeping a firm eye on these ones particuarly as cocoa powder tends to make them cook quicker and the slightest bit of overcooking them will make them a little dry.
9- Once they're cooked, leave to firm up on the trays then transfer to cool completely on a wire cooling rack.
10- Now enjoy. You can easily enjoy them when they're still warm or have a little more patience than me and wait for them to cool completely before devouring them all.