Monster Cookies

With many thanks to my friend Aleasha for giving me this recipe. :) Aleasha is an awesome friend, wife to a brilliant doctor, mommy to three lovely little girls, and a homemaker/chef extraordinaire. But when it comes to blogging...well, you're sort of dropping the ball, hun. ;) Not like I would know anything about slacking about blogging, right???

Okay, so Monster Cookies. These are pretty much to die for. The best cookies

E-V-A-H.

We had some Monster Cookies for the first time when my mother-in-law got us some frozen cookie dough from the Cookie Man. (The Cookie Man, apparently, sells boxes of frozen cookie dough, already in cookie-patty-portions, out of a van. Which sounds very much like the beginning of an episode of Law & Order or something, but the cookies are amazing.) So we had the Monster Cookies and pretty much fell into ecstasies of "Ohmygoodness, these are the best cookies E-V-A-H!!!"

I have since found out that Paula Deen has a recipe for Monster Cookies, but they have moderately healthy stuff in them, like raisins. {Psh.} No, these goodies from 'Leash are the real deal. But heads up: this is the lunch-lady-sized version of the recipe. As in, take a deep breath, and in advance, no, I didn't make a mistake: these really ARE the right proportions of ingredients (and yes, there is no flour in this recipe). I gave the instructions as I had to follow them based on limitations in size of my equipment. The recipe can easily be halved. :) But I don't plan to ever do that, as you'll see when you get to the end.

Monster Cookies (full recipe)

1 pound butter, softened

4 c white sugar

2 lb (one bag) light brown sugar

12 eggs

1 T vanilla

1 T light corn syrup

8 t baking soda

3 lbs peanut butter

In bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter until light and fluffy, then beat in sugars. Add eggs, one at a time (stopping to scrape down bowl as needed) until well incorporated. Add vanilla, corn syrup, and baking soda. At this point, I had to stop my mixer and put half of the butter/sugar mixture into a separate mixing bowl - you can use a kitchen scale to make sure you're being totally precise, if you're into stuff like that. (I have a Kitchen-Aid Artisan. Maybe if you have a larger capacity bowl to a stand mixer, you wouldn't need to do this?) To the remaining mixture, I added half the peanut butter and beat well. Then put the peanut butter mixture into yet ANOTHER separate mixing bowl, move the other plain sugar/butter mixture back to stand mixer. Beat in remaining peanut butter. Transfer the second peanut butter mixture to the first "batch" of peanut butter mixture bowl and stir well by hand. You should now have all the dough in one large bowl, mixed and then stirred to a uniform consistency. Eat a huge spoonful of this now, and thank me later. ;)

Then, divide your dough thus far into the 2 enormous mixing bowls as evenly as you can. For this next step you'll need in total...

18 cups old-fashioned oats (takes about one huge and one small can of oats, maybe a smidge more)

1 pound semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 pound M&Ms

1 pound peanut M&Ms

1 pound peanut butter M&Ms

Stir, by hand, the oats into the dough, then the candies. You can use any candies you like (like Reeses Pieces), or plain peanuts if you prefer. Really, the recipe is totally customizable to your own tastes, as well as what you have on hand. So I just added half of each of the above into the 2 mixing bowls holding all the wet ingredients, make sense? I wish I had taken pictures of each "now move this stuff here" step so it would make more sense. The next time I make a batch of dough, maybe I can do that and come back and add those pics in here. :)

Okay, see this? These are the biggest stainless steel mixing bowls I have, and they are also the largest I ever seen at a store that sells products for home use. Perhaps you can find even more mondo ones at restaurant supply places, but y'all: it takes 2 huge mixing bowls just to hold all the dough!!

Drop dough by the serving-spoonful (I just use the serving size spoon that goes with our flatware, although you could certainly go bigger), onto ungreased cookie sheets. Cook at 350*F for 12 minutes. They should look just set in the center, but don't overbake! They don't brown, so you can't judge by that. Just keep a close eye on them; these cookies aren't quite as special if they get too crispy.

This pic is of the first 2 I baked...next to Husband's hand. Holy cow. I had scooped them out with a measuring cup, I think. These were so big that I didn't feel like I could take them anywhere, or freeze them due to their size, so I dropped down to the serving-spoon after that.

I freeze most of my cookie dough, no matter what kind of cookies I make. Then any time sweet Hubby or kids (or me, with my mega-insane sweet tooth) feels like a hot, yummy treat, we can pull out the exact number of cookies we want to bake and go to town on them without all the mixing and clean-up work! :)

To flash-freeze remaining dough, drop by the spoonful onto wax-paper-covered cookie sheets and gently pat into a thick, round cookie shape. (Don't flatten them, but pat down any rough edges that will chip off easily when frozen.) Cover with plastic wrap and freeze until hard, then transfer to ziploc bags. You can bake them from frozen (just a few extra minutes), but I like to let them thaw a bit first. The dough also keeps well in the fridge if tightly covered. Makes approximately 85 cookies scooped with a serving spoon.

Hope you enjoy them!