Halloween Candy Cookies

Did anyone else end up with TONS of Halloween candy this year? Now that I have two little munchkins that can Trick or Treat, we ended up with a lot of candy. And we only did two streets!

Sophia the First & Minnie Mouse

 

Sorry, I couldn't help sharing a picture of my Trick or Treaters.   With all the candy we had, I wanted to do something fun with it so that I didn't end up coming home with a ton.  I thought cookies would be a good idea since the kids love them and they can help.

I used a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, but left out the chocolate chips.  Start with softened butter, add your sugar and brown sugar and mix until creamy.

Creamed butter and sugar



Then add your eggs and vanilla and mix well.  Then add all of your dry ingredients.

All the dry ingredients

 

Once that is mixed, you can start breaking up your candy.  Now you can incorporate your candy two ways. You can mix it into your dough or you can top your dough with the candy.  We went with the latter for two reasons. The first, is that my niece doesn't like chocolate. So we didn't want to mix in a bunch of chocolate candy and have her not eat any. The second, is that if you top your cookies with the candy, it's easier for the kids to help.

Just some of the candy we used

 

You want to break up the candy to make it easier to top the cookies with. Obviously stuff like M&M's and Skittles don't need to be broken up.  I put pretty large amounts of dough onto a cookie sheet and then let the girls 'decorate' the cookies.

Pretty sure they were eating more than they were putting on cookies

Layla putting her Skittles on cookies

 

We ended up using M&M's, Skittles, Reese's, Crunch bars, Kit Kats, Hershey Bars (Milk, Dark and Cookies & Cream), Milk Duds and Whoppers. The only candy I wouldn't recommend would be the Whoppers. They came out ROCK hard in the cookies. Everything else worked pretty well. I actually even stuffed two cookies with milk duds. Those came out pretty good too. Not as soft as Rollo's would have been though.

First batch ready for baking

 

Second batch

 

You want to bake them at 375 for about 9 min. If they are too soft you can leave them in longer but you want to watch them closely to make sure the chocolate does not burn.

First batch done

 

You want to let them cool for a while as the candy will take a bit longer to set. Plus I was worried about some of the candy, like the skittles and milk duds, being really hot. So I made these before dinner and then made the kiddos wait until after to eat them. Worked perfectly!

 

Recipe:

2 sticks softened butter

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour

1tsp baking soda

1tsp salt

Lots of Halloween Candy (broken up)

 

Mix butter and sugars until creamy

Add vanilla and eggs and mix well

Add dry ingredients, mix completely

Drop large spoonfulls onto baking sheet

Top with candy

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 9-11min

Cool completely