Cookies of Christmas - Chocolate Peanut Butter Candy Cookies

Christmas cookie baking in our house starts well ahead of Christmas - as does freezing and stashing away in the freezer. As you can imagine, my husband doesn't take very well to having dozens of fresh cookies in the house every weekend and not being able to eat any. These cookies are one of his favorite pre-Christmas treats which I let him eat while I save up all the other goodies for Christmas parties and cookie trays. The peanut butter M&M put these right over the top!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Candy Cookies

2 cups flour

3/4 cups cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

1/4 cup peanut butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1 package Peanut Butter M&Ms

Preheat oven to 350.

Stir together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. I use a wisk to mix everything well. Set aside.

In a mixer cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add peanut butter, eggs and vanilla and beat well. Gradually add flour mixture and mix until well combined.

Stir in M&Ms. I always stir mine in by hand to keep them whole and avoid getting little chunks of M&M.

Spoon or scoop dough onto a cookie sheet. I like to make mine with an ice cream scoop for night big cookies. These cookies will hold their size and shape when they bake, so you can place them fairly close together.

Bake 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven, allowing them to sit 1-2 minutes on the cookie sheet before transferring to a rack or wax paper to cook fully.

Good luck keeping these around until Christmas!