Funky Polkadot Giraffe: RECIPE: Hot Cocoa Cookies and {ELF}ing Your Neighbors

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #BakeInTheFun #CollectiveBias

I love baking during the holidays! And I especially love taking favorite recipes
and putting a new spin on them. I love to see the holiday themed M&M’s® that are released
each year andthink of a fun way to incorporate them into one of my favorite cookie recipes and
just bump themup a notch. It's fun to create something delicious and then share it with friends
and neighbors during the holidays.

So when I stopped at Walmart to pick up my groceries for the week and saw the
M&M’s®display with all of the holiday M&M’s® in one place, I had to grab
one of each bag! In addition to the M&M's® Holiday Milk Chocolate, M&M's® Holiday Peanut,
and M&M's® Holiday Peanut Butter, they also had M&M's® White Peppermint and

M&M's® Hot Chocolate!!!! The M&M's® Hot Chocolate spoke to my heart
and I knew just which recipe I was going to use them with - Hot Cocoa Cookies!!!

I also had to grab the Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Holiday Cake Mix because I think that I
need to try these adorable M&M's® Holiday Snowflake Cookies because they are
so festive and I love a good cake mix cookie! And whenever I'm making cookies,
we always have to have a gallon of milk on hand because what is better when you're testing
a new cookie recipe, than a nice tall glass of milk!

Isabella loves doing holiday baking with me. We put on our Christmas aprons, turn up
the Christmas music, and enjoy working together to make something
delicious for those we love.She was a great taste tester when I whipped up this new
recipe and gave it the thumbs up and assured me that I could win
a holiday baking challenge for sure!

In fact, the MARS Holiday #BakeInTheFun sweepstakes is going on right now!
If you vote for your favorite photo, you are entered to win one of eight KitchenAid® mixers!

M&M's® Hot Cocoa Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3 1/4 cups flour

1 cup hot cocoa mix

1 tsp salt

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1 9.4 oz bag M&M's® Hot Chocolate

1 1/4 cups tiny marshmallows

3/4 mini chocolate chips

small jar of marshmallow creme

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375°F. Combine butter and sugar and beat until light and fluffy.

Add in the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

2. Add in the flour, hot cocoa mix, salt and soda. Mix until well blended.

3. Pour in the M&M's® Hot Chocolate, tiny marshmallows, and mini chocolate chips

and stir in by hand until well combined.

4. Drop onto line baking sheet 2 inches apart. I used my cookie scoop to get just the right

amount of cookie dough.

5. Bake for 9-11 minutes and then cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before

transferring to a wire cooling rack.

Since these are Hot Cocoa Cookies, in addition to the tiny marshmallows baked inside
the cookies, I thought it would be fun to top the cookies with some marshmallow.
So I heated marshmallow creme in the microwave for 10-15 seconds, spooned it
into a medium size storage bag, snipped a little off one corner, and then piped the
marshmallow onto the top. It really put the flavor over the top and was a big hit with
the family!

Now all we need to do it to package them up, put them with my ELFed notes and instructions,
and go ELF our friends and neighbors with some yummy treats!
If you've never ELFed someone, it's just like the Halloween tradition of BOOing.
You bake up some delicious treats, print out the instructions, and stealthily leave them
on the porch of an unsuspecting friend or neighbor to spread some Christmas cheer!

Be sure when you serve up your Hot Cocoa Cookies you do it with a nice big
glass of ice cold milk!
One of the most requested food items at food banks is milk, but because people don't
think to donate milk to local food banks, they can only provide less than one gallon
per person per year! Think of all the essential nutrients and protein more than
46.5 million Americans, that rely on Feeding America food banks,
are missing out on each year!

This holiday season The Great American Milk Drive is delivering
gallons of nutrient rich milk to families in need.
For a small donation at pourmilklove.com The Great American Milk drive will donate
a gallon of milk to a needy family in your community.
You can learn more about the need for more nutritious foods in American food banks
and how your small donation can make a huge impact by logging into milklife.com/give.