If you are looking for a change up from regular ole Chocolate Chip Cookies to make for Valentine’s this year, how about trying these Cheesecake Pudding M&M Cookies?  A slightly crisp exterior with a soft, chewy interior, these cookies have cheesecake pudding mix, cream cheese chips, chocolate chunks, and Valentine’s M&M’s!  They are such a fun, cute cookie to share with the people you love this year!

These cookies are so easy to make, taking less than 30 minutes from start to finish.  They are so festive when you use the red, white and pink M&M’s and they have pools of chocolate in every bite!  Want to get the kids involved?  Have them help poke extra M&M’s in to the cookie balls before baking to help those pops of pink and red be even more vibrant!

A couple of tips for this recipe:

• You can make this with white chocolate, cheesecake, or vanilla pudding.  Just make sure you don’t use sugar free and your package is 3.4oz so you have equal weight dry ingredients.
• You can use white chocolate chips OR Hershey’s cream cheese chips if you can find them!
• My favorite chocolate chunks are the ones from Trader Joes.  If you don’t have a Trader Joes around, you can use another semi-sweet chocolate chunk or chip!  I would not use milk chocolate as these cookies are already pretty sweet.
• You could totally change these out to any festive colored plain M&M’s for any holiday or regular colored ones for any day!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter or margarine, cold and cut up into cubes
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3-1/4 cups AP flour (spooned and leveled)
• 1 pkg cheesecake pudding mix (3.4oz)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks
• 1 cup white cream cheese or white chocolate chips
• 1 cup valentine’s M&M’s (plain), plus extra for decorating

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In your mixer bowl, cream together the cold, cubed butter or margarine and both sugars for approximately 3 minutes. 
3. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla, one at a time, scraping down the sides in between.  
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, pudding mix, baking soda and salt.  
5. Add it to the creamed sugar mixture and stir until combined.  
6. Mix in the white and semi-sweet chocolate chips, then stir in the M&M’s.
7. Using a 2 Tbsp cookie scoop, scoop the dough on to your prepared trays, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie ball.
8. Press extra M&M’s in to the top of each ball of dough if desired.  I press in 3 different colors, just to help them show better in the cookies.
9. Bake for 8-9 minutes until the cookies are light golden brown on the top.  (For best results I cook one tray at a time on the middle shelf.)  
10. Remove from the oven and let the cookies sit on the trays on a cooling rack for 5 minutes, then transfer the cookies to the cooling racks.