EZ Mini M&M Confetti Cookies

My cake mix cooky recipe is the summer counterpart (summer-temperature tolerant) to my winter cake mix cooky recipe "Minty Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies". I wanted to bake some cookies that have chocolate that melts in your mouth, not in your hand. I thought about M&M's, then remembered chomping on mini M&M's the previous Halloween. Then I thought such cookies would look even more festive, besides having the colorful candy shells, if I added jimmies.

Several mini M & M cooky recipes I ran across are scratch and require about 10 ingredients. Well, how about starting with the standard cake mix cookie process that requires only cake mix, oil, egg?

My method of cake mix for this recipe was using 1/2 box of chocolate cake mix and 1/2 box of Pillsbury Funfetti cake mix. The Funfetti powder contains 2 tablespoons of jimmies, so my half box contained one tablespoon.

If you want the milk chocolatey cooky effect without weighing out cake mixes, you can use a marble cake mix. Stir jimmies into the cake powder(s) before mixing up the batter.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Initial
   1. Implements
   2. Ingredients
   3. Partially mixed dough (wet ingredients, dry ingredients) and set-aside mini M&Ms
2. Main mixing
   1. Mixed dough and and set-aside mini M&Ms
   2. Dough with mini M&Ms being poured
   3. Dough and mini M&Ms being stirred together
   4. Mixed dough
3. Baking
   1. Raw dough in pan
   2. Baked cookies in pan, some being scooped and flipped onto cooling rack
   3. Cooled cookies

Implements

• Small mixing bowl
• Larger mixing bowl
• Pastry blender
• Spoon for measuring out cooky dough
• Measuring cup
• Spatula for scraping dough onto pan
• Cooky pan(s)
• Cooling rack for done cookies
• Cooky spatula to lift and transfer baked cookies

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1/2 box chocolate cake mix
• 1/2 box Pillsbury Funfetti cake mix (or 1/2 box white cake mix and at least 1 tablespoon of jimmies)
• 1/2 bag of mini M&Ms (~ 5 oz)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325°.
2. Combine the powders and jimmies.
3. Combine the oil and eggs.
4. Combine the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. The dough will be thick.
5. Stir the mini M&Ms into the dough. Slow and steady works.
6. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough, and use the rubber spatula to shape.
7. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet. (For slightly flatter cookies, slightly flatten the shaped dough rounds with the spatula or the measuring cup.)
8. Bake for about 12 minutes.
9. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

The yield was 41 cookies, amounting to ~73 calories each. YMMV

Post-recipe Thoughts
The confetti part of the cookies was sparse. To give the cookies a more "celebratory" look in the future, I'd probably ensure three to four tablespoons of jimmies for each batch.

I had some boxes of cake mix on hand, so I measured and used half boxes, storing the other halves in the refrigerator. An easier process would be to use a marble cake mix and stir in jimmies into the powder. If you prefer a vanilla instead of summer-tolerant chocolate cooky, use just white or yellow cake mix, jimmies, and mini M&Ms.

July 12, 2016: I baked a second batch Sunday. This time, the 1/2 box of chocolate cake mix was Duncan Hines Classic Devil's Food Moist instead of Betty Crocker Super Moist Chocolate Fudge. Also, I added more jimmies—2 1/2 tablespoons, all that was left in my jar. The image on the left has the BC mix; the one one right has the DH mix and extra jimmies.

 I was surprised to see that the BC-mix cookies were much darker than the DH-mix ones. IMHO, the DH ones are closer to my idea of milk chocolatey cookies.

The yield for DH-mix cookies was 45, probably as a result of 1 1/2 tablespoons of additional jimmies, and variation of my cooky dough dispensing. I calculated DH-mix cookies to be about 71 calories each (BC-mix cookies, about 73 each.)

EZ Colorful Cupcake Topping

Bake your favorite cupcakes, then top with icing and colored sugars, rainbow jimmies, or nonpareils, or a combination. "Gluing" colored sugars onto glaze-topped cupcakes results in festive-looking snacks that have less topping than those with swirly, buttercream mounds of frosting.

The pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Cupcakes, topping ingredients, implements
2. Glaze items
   1. Ingredients and implements
   2. Vanilla poured into pan with water in it
   3. Powdered sugar mixed into pan (3 successive images)
3. Glazing and sugaring process
   1. Applying glaze to cupcake (I applied glaze with spoon instead of dipping cupcake top because of the cake crumbliness.)
   2. Moving color sugar-coated cupcake to rack
   3. Placing done cupcake onto pan
4. Topped cupcakes on plate

Implements (for Topping the Cupcakes)

• Cup for powdered sugar
• Measuring spoons
• Small, shallow pan for mixing the glaze
• Fork for mixing glaze ingredients
• Shallow bowls or saucers for colored sugars (I used 6" paper plates that I folded for pouring sugars back into their jars.)
• Pan or rack for cupcakes
• Spoon for distributing glaze on cupcakes if necessary (Fetched when the dip-cupcake-into-glaze attempt worked poorly.)

Ingredients

• Cupcakes
  12 baked cupcakes (I used half recipe of yellow cake mix and blended in 3 tablespoons of rainbow jimmies.
• Glaze ingredients (I used 1/2 recipe for simple powdered sugar glaze.)
  • 1 C powdered sugar
  • 1 1/2 tbsp water
  • 1/4 tsp vanilla
• Colorful sugars (suggestions as follows)
  • Colored sugars
  • Rainbow jimmies
  • Nonpareils (I skipped.)
  • Other

Note: The amount of glaze is for 12 cupcakes (a half-box recipe for standard cake mix powder, which contains approximately 15 or 16ish ounces.) Double the amount of glaze ingredients if you plan to decorate 24 cupcakes.

Instructions

• Bake or obtain a dozen cupcakes. (Suggestion: For more colorfulness, fold in 3 tablespoons of rainbow jimmies into the batter.) After baking, remove the cupcakes onto a cooling rack.
• Make the glaze. (I used a fork to stir the water and 1vanilla into a shallow pan, then stirred in the powdered sugar.)
• Dip tops of cupcakes onto the glaze, lightly dip them onto sugars, and set them rightside up onto the rack.

Post-recipe Thoughts
I will never, ever again use the Duncan Hines Classic Butter Golden cake mix. With my first half-box batch, I filled 12 oil-sprayed cupcake wells as I normally do. The baked cakes had encroached the top of the pan, resulting in "muffintop" looks. They were difficult to extract from the pan. Many partially crumbled.

With the second half-box batch, I sprayed oil more generously, and poured the batter over 16 wells. After baking, the cakes looked like they hardly rose. Moreover, they were also difficult to extract. The prominent fail part was trying to hold a cake in preparation to dipping it into the glaze. It was as fragile as a cornbread muffin, making it necessary to improvise and smear the glaze. In any case, the results were pretty ugly.

FWIW, the recipe calls for soft butter instead of oil, and less than half of the usual amount of water. The beating instructions required 30 seconds for initial blending, like "normal" cake instructions. However, it required 4 minutes of medium beating instead of the "normal" 2 minutes on high. The batter was very thick, and messy to distribute.

Visit my YouTube video to see more details of this recipe's process.

Related Articles

• Icing (glaze): Those Two-Tone Confetti Cupcakes
• Additional colorful sweets: A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter

Those Two-Tone Confetti Cupcakes

This article is one of my rare ones about food that is more analysis than recipe. Last month, I made Cinnamon Two-Tone Cupcakes with 1/2 box of yellow cake mix, using Wilton two-tone cake inserts. I observed that the interior columns of the cakes were blobby. This time, for the other half box, instead of a cinnamon and nutmeg mix for the interior part, I used 3 tablespoons of rainbow jimmies.

This batch came out worse looking than the cinnamon ones. The interior "columns" seem to have clumped together, some pooling at the bottom. The (confetti) jimmies look smeary after baking. I'm thinking that the combination of moistness and baking temperature partly dissolves those decorations. (A magnified pic in Confetti Cupcake Bites shows the same kind of smeariness.)

Icing

I used 1/2 recipe for simple powdered sugar glaze, omitting the vanilla. I used a fork to stir 1 1/2 tablespoons of water into a container with 1 cup of powdered sugar. With the cupcakes bunched together on the cooling rack atop a baking pan, I poured the glaze onto the cupcakes.

I had set the iced cupcakes in refrigerator for an hour or so, then "sugared" them up as follows:

1. Poured some red-color sugar on a saucer. (Happy Valentine's Day today!)
2. Placed each cupcake upside down onto the sugar and rotated the cake to coat its top.
3. Placed each of the cakes right side up.

Note: The image at the top of the article shows some cupcakes with glaze only and others with glaze and red sugar.

Post-batch Thoughts

 Batter Process
For the time I spent on dispensing the batters into the Wilton inserts and achieving the blobby, bland-looking baked results, I would not make the confetti version again. (If making confetti cupcakes, blend in maybe 5 to 6 tablespoons of jimmies into one batter bowl, foregoing Wilton cupcake inserts.)

The cinnamon two-tone cupcakes, although blobby, show visual contrast and taste really good. The image at page 31 of https://app.box.com/s/r62gd7ax0ctgjcw9os6bih5ic1z12vva shows more details than the image in the cinnamon cupcake article.

 Cake Topping Process
For future cupcake icing projects, I would pour the icing in small, tight circles or dip the tops of the cakes into the icing container. And I'd sugar them immediately instead of waiting till later. Why not coat with frosting?

• I don't have any canned frosting in the house and don't want to buy any.
• I have loads of powdered sugar I want to use up but don't want to make frosting using perishables like butter and milk.
• I want to use up some of the many colored sugars I have in the pantry.

Pancake-mIx Baked Donuts

My recipe makes 6 baked donuts, using pancake mix, water, and decorative sprinkles. Why only 6? Coz they're quicker to consume so that fewer might get stale. Also, good way to avoid overconsuming in a short time. Besides, I have only one 6-dunut pan and haven't felt inclined to acquire a second pan. Why baked? So you don't need to use a lot of oil and have a lot of it left over. Why pancake mix? For convenience of gathering and measuring fewer ingredients.

Initially, I had spotted an intriguing Parade Magazine recipe for baked donuts. After finding the online version, I googled other baked donut recipes. The Parade recipe started to lose its appeal—requirement of 9 items (too many for my taste), one being a different kind of flour than all-purpose. Turns out that many ingredients are used in pancakes.

I started googling for baked donuts that called for pancake mix. For my recipe, I inferred some processes, using minimal items. My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Bowl and mixing utensils used, batter in 6-donut pan
4. Batter with sprinkles
5. Baked donuts
6. Donuts on plate, two cut open

Implements

• Medium mixing bowl
• Wire whip
• Measuring cup for pancake powder
• Measuring cup for water
• Measuring spoons (just in case of needing any)
• Spatula for scraping batter
• 6-donut baking pan, available in crafts stores or online

Ingredients

• 1 C pancake mix powder
• 1 T sugar (Had omitted, but recommend, based on my outcome.)
• 1/2 t vanilla (Had omitted, but recommend, based on my outcome.)
• 2/3 C water
• Sprinkles (nonpareils and jimmies shown)
• Spray oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Spray pan with oil, including the donut hole "posts".
3. Stir pancake mix and water together in bowl.
4. Dispense the batter evenly into the pan wells, about 1+ heaping tablespoon each.
5. With finger, clear the batter off the "posts".
   

   Note: Several baked donut recipes say to pour the batter into a zipper bag and pipe into the wells.

6. Sprinkle the decorations you want. (I sprinkled nonpareils in one row and jimmies in the other row.)
7. With finger, clear the sprinkles off the "posts".
   
8. Bake for about 15 minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick.

Note: If you're leery of raw batter spilling onto the oven, place a larger pan below the donut pan. In my case, the donuts did not spill over.

9. Remove the donuts from the oven and let cool before using two spoons to lift and remove each from pan.

Post-recipe Thoughts
These donuts were less sweet than I expected, despite adding the sprinkles. One factor might be that I used buttermilk pancake mix instead of non-buttermilk. For future pancake-mix baked donuts, I would use non-buttermilk mix, add maybe an extra tablespoon of sugar, and add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla.

As for the decorations, some nonpareils, because of their spheroid shape, tended to roll willy nilly when I didn't aim well as I shook them onto first row. I might use only jimmies for future batches, maybe measuring and stirring 2 tablespoons into the batter before dispensing into the wells.

Nutrition: Calories for each donut is about 90; sodium is about 200. Check out nutrition tables for Krispy Kreme and Duncan Donuts.

Cost considerations: My pancake powder cost less than $1.50 for 32 ounces (~7 1/2 cups), lots less expensive than scratch ingredients, and way less expensive than similar recipes using cake mix. This half-dozen donut batch cost about 20¢ (a smidge over 3¢ each). The decorations add a nit extra cost. (Consider how much convenient store-bought donuts cost these days.) If you don't have a donut pan, consider buying one and economize for future donuts.

Related articles from me:

• Instant Pancake Mix, Info Table, Etc., for 12 Brands Includes ingredient info for 12 pancake mix brands.
• Confetti Cupcake Bites
  Includes info about nonpareils and jimmies.

Related articles from others:

• Pancake Mix Baked Donuts
  Uses 6-well donut pan (measurements in metric).
• Pancake Mix Donuts
  Uses donut maker.
• quick & easy {baked} cake mix donuts recipe
  Uses Babycakes DN-6 Mini Doughnut Maker, and calls for a full box of cake mix.
• Funfetti Doughnuts
  This shockingly expensive recipe uses fewer ingredients than scratch. However, this between-scratch-and-convenience recipe calls for ingredients that send the cost of donuts into the stratosphere.
• Baked Vanilla Doughnuts
  Uses 2 6-well donut pans (scratch ingredients). This Parade Magazine recipe was the original inspiration for me to try out my donut pan.

---

Additional pancake-theme articles:

• Delivery Pancakes or Not
• Whataburger Pancakes, Mix, or Scratch
• Instant Pancake Mix, Info Table, Etc., for 12 Brands

Confetti Cupcake Bites

My recipe makes half-size cupcakes, using nonpareils and jimmies in two half batches during one baking session. Contrast the results of the sprinkle types, and decide on your own single or duo sprinkle-type morsels. I've been dancing around using both kinds of sprinkles for cake mix cookies in a couple of previous recipe articles. This time, I'm talking about using cake mix for actual cake.

In case you're unfamiliar with differences between nonpareils and jimmies, "Sprinkles, Demystified: An Explanation of All Types" explains a main difference as shape—round for nonpareils and cylindrical for jimmies.

Round Sprinkles: These can more specifically be referred to as nonpareils. These are those teeny-tiny round balls that can come in a single color or in rainbow.

Cylinder Sprinkles: Sprinkles with a cylinder shape are made by mixing up a paste ...a little slower to “bleed” color than the nonpareil type of sprinkle. ....In some parts of the United States, particularly Pennsylvania and the Northeast, this type of sprinkle (the chocolate type in particular, it seems) are referred to as “Jimmies”.

Caution: Nonpareils "bleed" rather readily in moisture, even more so with cake batter than with cooky dough as in my "Rainbow Nonpareil Cake Mix Cookies" recipe. Thus, minimize time and effort when stirring nonpareils into batter.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Mixed cake mix batter
4. Batter divided into two Pyrex bowls—with nonpareils in the left bowl and jimmies in the right bowl
5. Each batter type in separate cupcake pans
6. Baked cupcakes
7. Cut sample cupcakes for visual contrast
8. Some cupcake bites arranged in a tin

Implements

• Mixing bowl
• Electric mixer
• Cup for eggs
• Measuring cup(s) for dispensing batter
• Tablespoon measuring spoon for measuring sprinkles
• Spatula for scraping batter
• Same-size bowls if making separate batches of nonpareil and jimmies batter (If making only one kind of cupcake, skip using these two bowls.)
• Cupcake pans

Ingredients

• 1 box cake mix (I used Betty Crocker Golden Vanilla.)
• Eggs (as listed on box)
• Cooking oil (as listed on box)
• Water (as listed on box)
• Sprinkles as follows (option a, b, or c—pixtrip shows option "a".):
  1. 2 T nonpareils for 1/2 recipe, 4 T jimmies for the other 1/2 recipe
  2. 4 T nonpareils for a whole recipe
  3. 8 T jimmies for a whole recipe
• Spray oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Spray pans with oil.
3. Follow box instructions for mixing powder, eggs, oil, and water together.
4. If making separate nonpareil and jimmies recipes, divide the cake batter equally into two bowls. (I used two Pyrex bowls and evened out the weights.) If making a batch with only one type of sprinkles, skip this step.
5. Add the sprinkles.
• When using nonpareils, measure and very lightly stir them into the batter to minimize color "bleed".
• When using jimmies, measure and stir them into the batter, but don't worry about color "bleed".
6. Scoop the batter into the pan wells, each about 3/4 full. (For more crunch in the nonpareil version, sprinkle an additional pinchful over each well after dispensing the batter.)
7. Bake for about 17-20 minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick.
8. Remove the baked cupcakes. Tilt them in the wells or place them onto a cooling rack to cool.
9. Frost if desired. Beware of extra effort required and added calories in gilding the lily.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
Interestingly, the heat seemed to cause the jimmies to diffuse. That is, after baking, the jimmies looked wavy instead of retaining their rod shapes. But the jimmies morsels didn't bleed and change the cake color like the nonpareil morsels did.

When working with nonpareils, remember that they're itty bitty spheres. When I first opened the jar, I tilted it. Out came several orbs, rolling freely on the table, a challenge to easily stop their willy-nilly, runaway movements.

Cake mixes that already contain jimmies are available. When I made the jimmies version of cake mix cookies, using Betty Crocker's Party Rainbow Chip mix, I didn't think to sift it to measure the amount of jimmies. Maybe some day I'll break down and buy another box, remembering to check out the amount of jimmies before baking something.

Rainbow Nonpareil Cake Mix Cookies

Multicolor sprinkle decorations for packaged cookies, cakes, and cake mixes tend to more often be jimmies than nonpareils. These cookies vary from the ones I made when I used the Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip cake mix. Instead of using cake mix that already includes multicolor jimmies, I used basic cake mix and added rainbow nonpareils. (Wilton's product name is Rainbow Nonpareils.)

"Sprinkles, Demystified: An Explanation of All Types" explains a main difference as shape—round for nonpareils and cylindrical for jimmies.

Round Sprinkles: These can more specifically be referred to as nonpareils. These are those teeny-tiny round balls that can come in a single color or in rainbow.

Cylinder Sprinkles: Sprinkles with a cylinder shape are made by mixing up a paste ...a little slower to “bleed” color than the nonpareil type of sprinkle. ....In some parts of the United States, particularly Pennsylvania and the Northeast, this type of sprinkle (the chocolate type in particular, it seems) are referred to as “Jimmies”.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Stirred cake mix and nonpareils (dry ingredients)
4. Stirred eggs and oil (wet ingredients)
5. Blended dry and wet ingredients in the larger bowl
6. Raw dough in pan
7. Baked cookies in pan
8. Cookies on a cooling rack (some flipped back to right side up)

Implements

• Cooky pan(s)
• Pastry blender
• Mixing bowls (one medium-large, one small)
• Measuring cup (optional for cracking eggs individually before pouring them into bowl)
• Tablespoon for measuring out cooky dough
• Spatula for scraping dough onto pan
• Cooky spatula for lifting and transferring baked cookies
• Cooling rack for baked cookies

Ingredients

• 1 box vanilla cake mix (I used Betty Crocker French Vanilla.)
• 4 Tablespoons Wilton Rainbow Nonpareils
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup cooking oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Use the pastry blender to stir the cake mix powder and nonpareils together in a medium-large bowl.
3. Use the pastry blender to stir the eggs and oil together in a small bowl.
4. Pour the eggs and oil mixture into the larger bowl and combine the ingredients.
5. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
6. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet, using the rubber spatula to ease out each lump.
7. Bake for about 9 to 11 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
8. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

The batch made 38 cookies, ~65 calories each.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
Those nonpareils in these cookies "bled" slightly into the dough during mixing, turning the dough a light bluish gray. Interestingly, enough of the nonpareils' texture remained so that after baking, the cookies still had some crunchiness within the soft texture. Eh, at some time, I should try another cooky batch with jimmies in an egg-oil-powder dough to see if the jimmies bleed.

A few months ago, I actually did bake a jimmies version, using Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip cake mix, but I used butter instead of oil. Looking at pix I had taken of the process for "EZ Buttery Confetti Cake Mix Cookies", the jimmies did not bleed and tint the egg-oil-powder dough.

The nonpareils came free with a supermarket promotion. Normal price would run about $1.75 for the 3-ounce jar. The four tablespoons amounted to over half the jar, thus, about a dollar's worth. Cake mix tends to run slightly more than a dollar for a 15.25-ounce box. The oil cost about 30¢, and the eggs cost about 34¢.

If I calculate the cookies as having free nonpareils, each cooky comes to a little over 4¢. If I include nonpareil price, each cooky comes to about 9¢. Sure, a big price difference. OTOH, you make them fresh instead of buying them from a store or bakery. Yum—freshness and lower cost!

For a quick reference to price of eggs and oil, scroll to the bottom table at "Whataburger Pancakes, Mix, or Scratch". (I calculated costs of scratch pancake ingredients, an egg and oil being two of the items.)