This weekend I set out to make the prettiest, most perfect, most deliciously moist and colorful Easter dessert. Unfortunately that is not the topic of this post. The “perfect” dessert was great in theory, a lemon, jello poke cake (inspired by this recipe) with beautiful pink frosting. It was going to be made from scratch with no artificial flavors or colors, but alas, I forgot one teensy thing when I was making it: I am terrible at baking! I have failed at cakes over and over again, even once before on Easter, yet I seem to forget this every time I find an inspiring recipe. Failure is, obviously, part of this whole cooking/blogging/living thing, so while I was a little bummed, I didn’t get too upset (and I still ate the cake, I just didn’t feel right posting a recipe for a cake that takes all day and comes out looking and tasting just ok).

In the midst of constructing the world’s most difficult cake, I decided to throw together a treat for the taste tester, who doesn’t like cake of any sort. So, I decided to make classic monster cookies, only instead of using M&Ms, I used his favorite-Cadbury mini eggs.

The best part about these cookies (other than taste) is that, unlike the ultra-complicated cake, they are almost impossible to mess up. Allergic to peanut butter? Sub another nut butter instead. Afraid that this might be too much chocolate? Omit the chocolate chips or sub butterscotch or cinnamon chips. Celebrating Easter alone, or not at all? Bake a few cookies now, in celebration of the emergence of the Cadbury egg, Reester egg, and Peeps, then freeze the rest for later!

I started with this recipe from Raining Hot Coupons and tweaked it to my liking. I obviously subbed Cadbury Eggs for the M&Ms and I also subbed coconut sugar for brown sugar because I bought brown sugar at the store and even though it was rock hard I didn’t look at the expiration date until I got home and it expired in July 2014 it’s healthier. I also used all-natural peanut butter (just peanuts and salt) and it worked just fine!

Taste Tester Says: The taste tester approved this recipe! He thoroughly enjoyed these cookies (and he encouragingly told me that my cake is “still better than store bought”). His only critique is that they were “too chocolatey” (is that even possible?), but that is due to the fact that I used the Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips, which are bigger than normal chocolate chips and the Cadbury eggs. You can also remedy this by adding the eggs after you drop the cookies on your cookie sheet, this ensures both an even dispersion of eggs and that they are visible on the top of the cookies-for a more festive look.