M&M's Trail Mix Cookies

These cookies are basically trail mix in cookie form. Peanut butter, M&M’s, whole peanuts, raisins, rolled oats, oat bran, and wheat germ all go into one massive dough. Every cookie is a handful of textures and flavors.

The oat bran and wheat germ aren’t just health additions. They give the cookies a nutty, toasty depth that straight flour doesn’t. Combined with rolled oats in the batter, there’s a hearty chewiness here that holds up to all those chunky mix-ins.

Peanut butter gets stirred in after the flour mixture, and it does more than add flavor. It binds everything together and gives the cookies a tender, slightly sandy texture rather than a crisp snap.

Kitchen Tips

• Flatten the dough balls slightly before baking. These cookies are dense with mix-ins and won’t spread much on their own.
• Pull them at 9 minutes for chewier cookies. They’ll look slightly underdone but firm up as they cool on the sheet.
• Cool for 1 minute on the baking sheet before transferring. Moving them too soon means crumbled cookies. All those nuts and candies make them fragile when hot.
• Use a rounded tablespoon for consistent sizing. With this many mix-ins, freehand scooping creates wildly uneven cookies.

Variations

• Swap raisins for dried cranberries for a tart contrast against the sweet M&M’s.
• Use chocolate peanut butter M&M’s for an even more chocolatey, peanut-forward cookie.
• Add a cup of shredded coconut for a tropical trail mix version.