When John and I got married we had M&Ms on the tables for people to snack on. I like to be overly prepared, so I bought extra M&Ms just in case. Well, we didn’t need the extra M&Ms. We ended up with about a gallon of M&Ms. John took it upon himself to eat the extras.

He created the “deconstructed candy bar” and had it for dessert every night. It is a very fancy name for a simple treat. First you put a glob of peanut butter in a bowl. Then you put M&Ms in the bowl. Then you dip pretzel sticks in the peanut butter and scoop up a nice sized blob. Then you dip the peanut butter pretzels into the M&Ms. Then you eat it. If you get tired of using the pretzel sticks you can use a spoon and place pretzels directly on the glob.

Today I looked at the remaining Easter M&Ms and knew that they had to go. I don’t like to have temptations like M&Ms in the house. I got to thinking about John’s deconstructed candy bar, and decided to take those flavors and put them in a monster cookie.

I started with the Pioneer Woman’s recipe for Monster Cookies. I made a few changes to the recipe. I reduced the brown sugar by about 1/3 and added about 1 1/2 cups of peanut butter. I also added pretzel bits, as I was trying to recapture the magic of the deconstructed candy bar for John.

The cookies turned out OK. If I make them again I would reduce the salt from the original recipe. I should have thought about that when adding the pretzels and the peanut butter, but I didn’t. John likes the cookies that he inspired, but he isn’t sold on pretzels in cookies, as they lose a bit of their crunch. I liked their crunchy texture and peanut butter flavor, but I think there were too many chips. I absolutely loved the rice krispies and I think I’ll be adding them to cookies again.

I’ve been trying to mix up my baking by not following recipes to the letter. I am an experienced enough baker it is unlikely that I will royally screw cookies up. Even if the cookies are bad at least I will have tried something new.