Monster Cookies

Our hometown has a growing, active and delicious food truck scene. A couple days ago I took my kids to a food truck rodeo where they tried, for the first time, Monster Cookies. I wanted to bake something different to send off to camp with them next week, so I thought I'd try to re-create the recipe. I looked online and found lots of recipes, but none that looked quite like the ones we enjoyed earlier this week. After reading through I made some modifications and came up with a basic recipe I thought might work. Almost every recipe I found had no flour, so although my cookies are not gluten free, it would be easy to adapt this recipe to make a gluten free variety.

I used:

1 1/2 cups chunky peanut butter

1 Cup packed light brown sugar

1 Cup granulated sugar

1 stick of unsalted butter, very soft

3 large eggs

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

4 1/2 cups oats (not quick cooking)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup ech milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and butterscotch chips

Cream together the peanut butter, butter and both sugars. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. I used chunky peanut butter because I wanted the texture with out adding additional nuts. You could use creamy peanut butter if you wanted to.

Add the oats, baking soda and salt and mix to combine. I used regular old fashioned oats. I never buy quick oats. My kids don't like them and I don't think they have much flavor. I wanted the cookies to have a nice oat flavor. You could substitute gluten free oats as well.

Stir in the chips. Most of the recipes I found used M&M candies. I didn't have any in the house. You could use any chips in any combination that you have on hand, you will just need about 2 cups total for this recipe.

Drop the cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheet. These are monster cookies, so i wanted them to be big! I used an ice cream scoop. You could also use a 1/4 cup dry measuring cup. You could also make regular size cookies, but the baking time would need to be adjusted.

Bake them at 350 degrees for 14-16 minutes. Mine came out perfectly after 14 minutes. I rotated the trays half way through baking to make sure they baked evenly. If you made smaller, regular size cookies I would guess they would bake for 8-10 minutes.

The finished product! They look just like the ones we had at the rodeo. The kids said the were more peanut buttery. They really liked them! One of my kids even said they were better that the cookies at the food truck. He might be my favorite!