Monster Cookies

Monster cookies emerged from Midwestern church potlucks and bake sales sometime in the 1970s, though no one has successfully traced their exact origin. What we know is this: some brilliant home baker realized that peanut butter and oats could replace flour entirely, freeing up valuable real estate for chocolate chips, M&Ms, and whatever else needed a home. The result was a cookie that defied convention and delighted everyone who encountered it.

The name fits. These are massive, generous things, packed so full of mix-ins that the dough barely holds together. That's intentional. The oats provide chew and structure while the peanut butter acts as both binder and flavor engine. There's no flour to interfere with the pure pleasure of butter, sugar, peanut butter, and an unreasonable quantity of candy.

I've watched home bakers overthink this recipe for decades. They worry about ratios, about whether the dough looks right, about whether they've added too many M&Ms. Let me settle this: you cannot add too many M&Ms. The dough will look shaggy and loose. That's correct. These cookies spread and flatten into thick, chewy discs with crispy edges and soft centers. Trust the process.

Make them large. A quarter cup of dough per cookie is standard, but I've seen versions using ice cream scoops that produce cookies the size of saucers. Both work. The only mistake is timidity.