4th of July Cookies | M&M’s | Oatmeal | Chocolate Chip

4th of July Cookies | M&M’s | Oatmeal | Chocolate Chip

Celebrate Independence Day with these healthy 4th of July Cookies made with Oatmeal. With the Red and Blue M&M’s on top, and chocolate chips inside the cookie dough, these “Patriotic Cookies”, or, as I like to call them, “Firework Cookies”, are sure to leave your taste-buds happy. Also perfect as Memorial Day Cookies too!

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More than half of May has already passed, and what better time to release the recipe of a dessert for 4th of July, America’s Independence Day. Coincidentally, the day I made these cookies was #NationalChocolateChipDay. Duh! As if we need a day for eating chocolate chips! For the kids, that day is “Any day, Any time.” LOL!!

My blog has many recipes that use chocolate chips, most of them are cookies, rest are some cakes and muffins. If you like this recipe, you can definitely check out these extremely popular Chocolate Chip Whole Wheat Cookies, Chocolate Chip Whole Wheat Banana Cake, Eggless & Butter-free Chocolate Chip Cookies, and of course, the very healthy Ragi (Finger-Millet) Whole Wheat Banana Chocolate Muffins!

Those who are following my posts, definitely know by now, that this blog is all about healthy baking. The desserts are all refined flour free and refined sugar free as well. In most of the recipes, I use whole wheat flour and jaggery powder (or unrefined cane sugar).

There are some recipes which use other flours like Oatmeal, Ragi (Finger Millet) flour and Chickpea Flour, but these are used in combination with a base flour which is whole wheat flour most of the times.

This particular recipe has been adapted from one of my previous recipes, that is the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies. I have used Red and Blue M&M’s to make the cookies look patriotic, so a perfect option for 4th of July healthy desserts ideas. If you want to, you can even adapt this recipe to create basic M&M oatmeal cookies by topping the M&M’s of varying colors.

How do you make these 4th of July Cookies?

This one is a pretty straight-forward recipe!

• Mix the butter and jaggery powder and blend well.
• Add in the egg and vanilla, and mix again.
• Add dry ingredients, oatmeal, whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and ground cinnamon.
• Mix everything gently to form a lose dough.
• Add in the chocolate chips and mix everything again.
• Refrigerate the dough for half an hour to one hour.
• Remove from fridge, make cookie balls and flatten them on the parchment paper.
• Top them off with Red and Blue M&M’s (Use white too if you have available).
• Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degree Fahrenheit for around 14-16 minutes.
• Remove from oven, enjoy warm or store in an airtight container for later.

Substitutions & Tips

• Whole Wheat Flour – Feel free to replace whole wheat flour with the same quantity of all-purpose flour. If the cookie dough feels a little loose, add 1/4th cup more of all-purpose flour.
• Jaggery Powder – If Jaggery Powder is not available, you can replace it with equal amount of coconut palm sugar.
• M&M’s – To make the recipe generic (for any occasion), feel free to use assorted colors of M&M’s on top of each cookie. You can also use a single color of M&M’s for some color coordinated event. For bakers residing in India, you can use the colorful Cadbury Gems, if you don’t have M&M’s available at hand.
• Egg – To make the recipe eggless, I would advise to replace the egg with either of these two options:
  • Chia Seed Gel (Mix 1 Tbsp Chia seeds with 3 Tbsp water, and let it soak for 5 minutes)
  • Flax Seed Gel (Mix 1 Tbsp powdered Flax seeds with 3 Tbsp water, and let it soak for 5 minutes)

Tools & Equipment Used

• Cuisinart 14-Cup Food Processor (For pulsing the Oats)
• Pyrex Glass Mixing Bowls Set

Also, continuing the tradition, here comes the 38th recipe under My Julie & Julia Project. For those who don’t know, I had started this project last year, under which I had planned to post 100 recipes from my kitchen by the end of the year 2019. But since I got busy with other priorities in life, I have planned to continue the tradition in 2020. So, this is the Recipe #38 for you all.

Now let’s take you straight to the recipe of 4th of July Cookies aka Oatmeal M&M’s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe!

Method (Step-by-step with pictures)

• Mix the butter and jaggery powder till the jaggery powder is completely blended with the butter. I prefer to mix by hand since I don’t use mixer. Whisk or spatula is not helpful in this case, since the butter is not in a completely melted state.

• Add in the egg to this mixture. Now add vanilla essence to the above mixture and stir till all the ingredients are uniformly mixed. The wet ingredients mixture is now ready.

• For the dry ingredients, gently mix in oats flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, ground cinnamon and salt to the wet mixture.

• Finally add the chocolate chips and give it a good mix with hand. It is advisable to refrigerate the dough in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

• Remove the cookie dough from the refrigerator and let it come to the room temperature (for around 5 minutes).
• Preheat oven to 375 degree F.
• Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
• Take around 1-2 tbsp of dough in your hands, form a ball, and flatten a little. I was able to make 12 cookies with the prepared dough.
• Top the prepared cookie rounds with 5-6 red and blue M&M’s (Use white ones too if you have available).

• Bake the cookies for around 15-17 minutes in the preheated oven, or till you see creases on top of the cookies. The cookies will be soft to touch. But once cooled, they will be fine. It took me exactly 16 minutes to bake them to the right texture.
• Remove the cookies from the oven. Allow them to cool for at least 5-10 minutes.

The 4th of July Cookies are now ready to be served warm or these can be stored in an air-tight container for 5-7 days!