The Best Oatmeal M&M Chocolate Chip Cookies

I do not know how to write this. I have written one hundred and seven weeks of this blog and I have always known how to start — with the food, with the kitchen, with the stove that is always warm and the hands that are always moving. But my hands are not moving. My stove is cold. My kitchen is a room I cannot enter, and the food is a language I have forgotten how to speak, and I am writing this from the couch in the den where I have been sitting for days, or hours, or years — I do not know. Time has stopped. Time stopped on March 3rd, 2018, on Interstate 65, in a car that was not supposed to be in the wrong lane, carrying a boy who was not supposed to die.

Marcus is dead. My baby is dead. He was seventeen years old. He was a passenger. The driver — his classmate, a boy named DeShawn — was looking at his phone. The car crossed the center line. A delivery truck hit them. Marcus died at the scene. At the scene. Which means on the highway. Which means on the asphalt. Which means my son, who was going to Tuskegee, who was going to be an engineer, who was going to build bridges, died on a road. A road killed him. A phone killed him. A moment of inattention killed him. Seventeen years of love and fried chicken and mac and cheese and Sunday dinners and prayers and homework and laughter — that laugh, my laugh, the one he inherited the way he inherited my eyes — all of it, ended. On a road. In a moment. While I was at home stirring a pot of soup that he would never eat.

Calvin got the call. I was in the kitchen. I heard the phone ring and I heard Calvin answer and I heard a sound come out of my husband that I had never heard before and will never unhear — a sound that was not a word, not a cry, but something animal and ancient and final, the sound a man makes when God takes his son and offers no explanation. Calvin came into the kitchen and his face was a face I did not recognize, and he said: Loretta. That's all. My name. And I knew. A mother knows. Before the words, before the explanation, before the drive to the hospital where they would tell us what we already knew — I knew. My body knew. My body went cold from the feet up, like dying starts at the ground and works its way to the heart, and I stood in my kitchen holding a wooden spoon and I felt the world end. Not the whole world. My world. The world that had Marcus in it. That world is over. I live in a different one now. A world where the stove is cold and the kitchen is dark and the food is ashes and my son is gone and nothing — not faith, not cooking, not prayer, not love — nothing can bring him back. Nothing.

I did not make these. I want to be honest about that. My kitchen was dark, my hands were still, and the wooden spoon I had been holding when Calvin said my name was still on the counter where I left it, because I could not touch it and I could not move it and I could not go back into that room. But people came anyway — to the door, to the porch — with casseroles and pound cakes and foil-wrapped plates, and somewhere in those first impossible days, someone left a tin of these cookies, oatmeal with M&Ms and chocolate chips, the kind Marcus would have taken three of before dinner without asking. I did not eat them for two days. Then I ate one, sitting on the floor of the den, and I cried so hard I could not breathe. I am sharing the recipe now not because I am healed, not because the kitchen is warm again, but because someone reading this will need to make them for someone who cannot make anything at all.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 27 minutes | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats)
1 cup M&M candies (plain or peanut)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat. Heat your oven to 350°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl using a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together on medium-high speed for 2 to 3 minutes, until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add eggs and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract. The mixture should look smooth and slightly pale.
Mix in the dry ingredients. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Mix on low speed just until combined — do not overmix. The dough will be thick.
Fold in oats, M&Ms, and chocolate chips. Switch to a sturdy wooden spoon or rubber spatula and stir in the rolled oats until fully incorporated. Then gently fold in the M&M candies and chocolate chips, distributing them evenly throughout the dough.
Scoop the dough. Using a medium cookie scoop or a heaping tablespoon, portion the dough into balls roughly 1 1/2 inches in diameter and place them 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Do not flatten them — they will spread naturally in the oven.
Bake. Bake one sheet at a time on the center rack for 11 to 13 minutes, until the edges are set and lightly golden but the centers still look slightly underdone. They will firm up as they cool. Do not overbake.
Cool. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, or freeze baked cookies for up to 2 months.

Nutrition (per serving)

The Best Oatmeal M&M Chocolate Chip Cookies — What People Bring When There Are No Words