Soft and chewy on the inside, and crispy on the outside these NYC style Mini Egg cookies are an Easter must-bake. With tasty chocolate and the pleasing crunch of Mini Egg shells in every bite, these cookies are sure to be a crowd-pleaser. The best part is that this recipe is super easy and requires just 9 basic ingredients. After 30 minutes of prepping and baking time, you'll be lost in the deliciousness of warm freshly baked Easter cookies before you know it.
The post contains additional information and helpful tips to ensure the recipe turns out great the first time. Please use the link above to jump to the recipe card at the end if you are in a hurry!
Jump to:
- ✅ 5 reasons why you'll love this recipe:
- 🛒 Ingredients:
- The best way to break up the Mini Eggs
- Mixing
- 🧑🍳 Recipe steps
- Perfectly round cookies
- 👍 Expert tips
- 🍪 Cookie troubleshooting
- Variations
- 🙋 FAQs
- 📦 Storage & freezing instructions
- How to reheat cookies
- 😋 More cookie and Easter baking recipes
- 📖 Recipe
- Recipe Card
I don't know about you, but when March hits it's all about Easter baking. If you love Mini Eggs (and who doesn't?) you should check out my triple-layer Mini Egg Brownies. Or if you are still craving cookies these Mini Egg Cookie Bars are a delicious and packable treat.
✅ 5 reasons why you'll love this recipe:
- Perfectly soft and chewy cookies
- Packed with Mini Egg deliciousness
- Make them your own with white, milk, dark or butterscotch chips
- So easy to make
- Just 9 everyday ingredients
🛒 Ingredients:
These tasty cookies require just 9 everyday ingredients. In this section, we'll take a look at some of the key ingredients and answer any questions you might have about substitutions.
Cadbury Mini Eggs
The star ingredient. I will always reach for Cadbury eggs, but you can use another brand of Mini Eggs or switch them for another type of shelled chocolate like M&Ms or Smarties.
Chocolate chips
Adding chocolate chips and/or butterscotch chips makes for a more interesting flavour or texture. You can take free rein here as long as you stick to the suggested volume. A lot of recipes suggest adding dark chocolate, but I tend to opt for a mixture of white and dark because I love the contrasting flavours.
You can use chocolate baking chips or chop up a bar of chocolate into small pieces. I will only buy chocolate chips if I don't have other chocolate in the house.
Optional butterscotch chips
Butterscotch chips add soft pockets of caramel flavour and are optional but highly recommended. Most large supermarkets stock them, but you can use small pieces of chopped soft caramels or fudge instead.
Sugar
I love to use golden granulated sugar for cookies because it adds some of the richness you get from soft brown sugar. You can use a mixture of brown and white sugar to get a similar taste. In fact, you'll notice a lot of cookie recipes require both but golden/light brown saves you the hassle of buying two types.
Please avoid using only white or brown sugar. The cookies will be bland tasting or too rich.
Using oil instead of butter
Butter can be switched for oil in most baking recipes and the general advice is to use ¾ of the amount. Note, that these cookies have only been tested with butter.
Baking powder
This is a key ingredient that lets your cookies rise and puff up giving them a soft airy texture. Please don't be tempted to skip it. While your cookies will still be edible, the texture will be dense.
Flour and gluten-free cookies
This recipe has been tested with regular plain/all-purpose flour. You can use gluten-free or almond flour instead, but please note that the recipe has not been tested with these, so the results cannot be guaranteed.
The best way to break up the Mini Eggs
When it comes to great-tasting Easter cookies the consistency of the Mini Eggs is key. Whole Mini Eggs are no good, you want to break them up into discernible chunks. Thirds or quarters are ideal, but breaking up Mini Eggs can be tricky. Their hard shells make cutting with a knife a little dicey, and you're also likely to get a few rogue chopped Mini Eggs pinging off the chopping board. Use a food processor and the chunks will be too small, and they'll also be some useless chocolate powder to contend with.
Not everyone has a food processor, but fortunately, most of us have a freezer bag and a rolling pin and these are the best tools for the job. Simply place the Mini Eggs in the bag, seal and bash until you get to your chosen consistency. I like to do two batches, one of smaller pieces to mix into the cookies and one of larger chunks to top with.
Mixing
I tend to reach for my electric whisk. It's easy to set up and clean and does the job well. You can also use a stand mixer if you have one or whisk together the ingredients by hand with a manual whisk, mixing spoon and a little elbow grease.
Please be gentle with the Mini Eggs and chocolate chips. These should be carefully folded in by hand, so they don't break into smaller pieces.
🧑🍳 Recipe steps
1. Combine the wet ingredients
Add the butter and sugar to the bowl and cream together using a manual whisk, electric whisk or stand mixer. Then mix in the egg and vanilla essence.
Top tip: Ensure the butter is at room temperature before you begin. If you have forgotten to take your butter out of the fridge you can use your microwave to warm cold butter. Cut it into small pieces and place it in a single layer on a plate and microwave for short 5-10 second bursts, turning halfway until it is soft enough to indent when you place your finger on it.
2. Add the dry ingredients
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl, pour into the wet ingredients and combine into cookie dough.
3. Mini Eggs and chocolate chips
Gently fold in the crushed Mini Eggs, chocolate chips (and optional butterscotch chips) by hand.
4. Form the cookies
Form the cookie dough into 8 even-sized balls and place them onto a lined baking tray. Press a few larger Mini Egg chunks into each cookie.
5. Bake
Bake for 12 minutes at 200°C or 390°F until the tops start to brown. Remove them from the oven and leave them to cool for 5-10 minutes on the baking tray before you move them to a rack to cool completely.
Perfectly round cookies
Cookies can take on some funky shapes while they're in the oven. Luckily, there's a simple yet effective hack to get them nice and round again. All you need is a round cookie cutter or glass that's about the same size as your wonky cookies.
Simply place the cutter or glass over each cookie and swirl it around the cookie to neaten up the edges. Note, that this only works when the cookies are warm and soft and is best done as soon as the cookies come out of the oven.
👍 Expert tips
- Get the butter and egg to room temp before you begin - to get more air into the mixture and evenly textured cookie dough. Use cold eggs and butter and you'll get dense cookies. It really pays to plan ahead.
- Use a freezer bag and rolling pin to break up the Mini Eggs - it is the simplest and safest way to crack those pesky little shells.
- Avoid over-baking - perfectly soft and chewy cookies can seem underdone when you remove them from the oven, but remember that they are ready as soon as they start to brown. Don't be concerned if they are soft to touch, they will harden as they cool.
🍪 Cookie troubleshooting
Soft dough
If your dough is particularly soft, it's likely to spread more than you want it to when you bake it. Although this recipe doesn't call for chilling, you may want to place them in the fridge for 15-20 minutes before you bake them if you prepare them in a particularly warm environment.
Flat cookies
The baking powder will cause the cookies to rise, resulting in a deliciously soft and airy texture.
Not adding enough, or any baking powder will result in flat dense cookies. Cookies can also become flat when they spread out too much in the oven.
Cakey cookies
It's fair to say that some cookie recipes are more cakey than others. Although consistency is ultimately a matter of personal preference, there are a few factors that can cause cookies to have a cakey texture.
- Over mixing - a cake mixture requires a thorough beating to get it nice and airy resulting in that cake-like texture that you do not want in your cookies. Make sure you stop mixing the cookie ingredients as soon as they are combined.
- Inaccurate measurements - use scales to weigh the ingredients instead of volume measurements using cups.
- Too much egg or baking powder - these both act as leavening agents and cause your cookies to rise. Add too much and the cookies will rise more than they should and become cakey.
Variations
One of the great things about this cookie recipe is that you can tweak it to make it your own. Here are a few things to try:
- Nuts - swap out some or all of the chocolate chips for nuts. I tried this with flaked almonds, and it was really delicious. Pistachios or hazelnuts are also a good choice.
- White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies - if you want more NYC-style cookies once Easter has been and gone, these are for you. They're just like the Mini Egg cookies but with a wonderful combination of tart raspberry and sweet white chocolate.
- Peanut butter cookies - enjoy the delicious texture of NYC cookies with peanut butter and white chocolate chips.
- Small batch - this recipe yields 8 cookies, but you can halve it if you want less. Wondering how to half an egg? It's actually pretty simple, just crack it into a small bowl or mug, beat and take half for your cookies. You can weigh it if you want to be precise.
🙋 FAQs
'Biscuits' and 'cookies' can mean different things depending on where you are in the world. In the US and Canada, cookies are soft or crunchy flat-baked treats made with flour, sugar eggs and butter or oil. In the UK these baked treats that are often enjoyed as tasty snacks or desserts tend to be called biscuits. They can be sweet or savoury and are often made with similar ingredients to cookies.
Cadbury Mini Eggs are a seasonal product that is typically sold during the springtime and Easter period. They usually make an appearance in stores in February and are very easy to find throughout March and April. Finding Mini Eggs at other times of the year can be tricky, but there are some online retailers that sell them all year round.
If you don't use enough egg in cookies, they may end up dry, crumbly, and tough. Eggs provide moisture, help bind the ingredients together, and contribute to the texture and structure of the cookies. They also help the cookies rise and spread while baking, so if you skimp on the eggs, you might end up with flat and dense cookies.
The taste and texture of Mini Eggs can vary depending on where you buy them. Some say that the UK version tastes better and that in the US the Mini Eggs are sweeter and less chocolatey. On the whole, Cadbury uses high-quality ingredients, so they should taste pretty similar no matter where you buy them.
There are a few things you can do to get soft, chewy and delicious cookies, but the most important thing is not to overbake them. You want to remove the cookies from the oven as soon as they start to brown around the edges and the tops seem cracked. They can seem soft and molten at this point, but they will harden as they cool. Choosing a recipe with more brown than white sugar and storing the baked cookies in an airtight tin will also help you get that perfectly soft and chewy texture.
📦 Storage & freezing instructions
The cookies will keep for up to a week when stored properly in an airtight container.
Freezing cookie dough
Freezing cookie dough is super easy and a great way to have freshly baked cookies on hand whenever you want. Simply place the formed cookie dough balls on a lined baking sheet or plate and freeze. Once they are frozen you can transfer them to a freezer bag or airtight container. Then you just bake them from frozen, adding a minute or two to the cooking time.
Freezing baked cookies
Cookies that have been frozen will still taste fresh and delicious. Just let the baked cookies cool completely and place them in a freezer bag or airtight container with pieces of baking paper between them and freeze. Then let them thaw at room temperature for a few hours and enjoy.
How to reheat cookies
Reheating cookies is a great way to bring back that fresh-out of the oven warmth, taste and texture. It's also super easy and can be done using your microwave, oven or air fryer.
- Microwave: pop them in for 10-15 seconds until they become warm
- Oven: place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake for 5-10 minutes at 175°C (350°F). Be careful not to overheat them. You don't want them to become tough and dry.
- Air fryer: Place the cookies in the air fryer basket and cook at 175°C (350°F) for 2-3 minutes until they are warm and crispy. Keep checking on them to ensure they don't burn.
😋 More cookie and Easter baking recipes
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📖 Recipe
Recipe Card
Mini Egg Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
- 160 g (¾ cup) Cadbury Mini Eggs
- 60 g (¼ cup) unsalted butter room temperature
- 120 g (½ cup + 1.5 tbsp) golden granulated sugar Note 1
- 1 egg room temperature
- ½ teaspoon vanilla essence
- 150 g (1.25 cups) plain or all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 80 g (½ cup) dark, milk, white chocolate chips, or butterscotch chips (or a mixture)
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 390F or 200C. Line a baking tray with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
- Put two thirds of the Mini Eggs into a sealed freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin to break them up into small yet discernible chunks. Aim for around a quarter of a Mini Egg.
- Pour the bashed Mini Eggs into a bowl and set aside. Add the remaining eggs to the bag , bash into larger chunks of around ½ Mini Egg in size and set aside in another bowl.
- Beat the butter and sugar with a manual whisk, electric whisk or stand mixer. Then mix in the egg and vanilla essence.
- Mix the flour, baking powder and sea salt in a separate bowl. Then pour them into the wet ingredients and gently mix.
- Gently fold in the Mini Eggs and chocolate chips by hand.
- Form the cookie dough into 8 even-sized balls and place on the baking tray, ensuring they are 5cm/2 inches apart.
- Place the additional halved Mini Eggs into the outside of the cookies.
- Bake for 12-14 minutes until the edges begin to brown and the tops start to crack. (Note 2)
- Optional: To get perfectly round cookies use a round cookie cutter or glass, place it over the cookies as soon as they have come out of the oven and move it gently around the outside to round off any uneven edges.
- Let the cookies cool for 5-10 minutes on the tray and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Sugar: You can also use a mixture of brown and white sugar. Please avoid using only white or brown sugar. The cookies will be bland tasting or too rich.
- Perfectly baked cookies: Perfectly baked cookies will still feel molten and soft to touch but will harden as they cool.
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