Mini Leftover Halloween Candy Cookies!

My husband and I decided to try not only ginormous candy stuffed cookies but mini candy cookies! Instead of enclosing the candies into the cookies, we just added bits of candy on the top of just baked M&M cookies!

We used the same dough from the stuffed cookie recipe but using just one 3/4" rolled ball, we baked them in a mini muffin tin and added the candy after it baked! So delicious. You get a soft cookie with a burst of chocolate from the candy bars. And you don't feel as guilty as eating a full stuffed cookie!

We had a lot of extra candy

Rolled the dough, put them in a mini muffin tin and into the oven

We cut up the candy bars. Quartered the Reese's Pieces and cut all the rest into thirds besides the whoppers. 

After 20 minutes in a 300 degree oven, we took them out and stuck the candy in each one. 

Then let them cool. 

They get all gooey and yummy.

Once cooled, they are perfect bite sized cookies! 

Recipe (adapted from Sugar Loco and Fantastic Family Favorite's):

• 2 1/8 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 12 TBSPs butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled slightly
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsps vanilla extract
• 7-8 fun size packets of M&M's 
• Candies to stuff inside the cookies (Reese's work best, Crunch bars, Oreos, Snickers, Butterfingers, etc)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Prepare a mini muffin pan, by greasing with butter or pan spray.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
In a large bowl with an electric mixer, blend the granulated and brown sugars.  Add the butter and beat to form a grainy paste.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla, then beat at medium speed until fully combined.  Add the flour mixture and blend at low speed until just combined; do no over mix.  Fold in the M&Ms.
For each cookie, roll a 3/4 inch ball and press slightly into muffin cups.  
Bake in oven for 20 minutes. 
Press the treat of your choice into the center of the cookie.   Let cool for about 15 minutes (even longer if you can) before attempting to remove them from the cups.

Left over candy cookies! Stuffed cookies with an M&M cookie dough!

So the tactic of picking out the candies you would want to eat for the trick-or-treaters, didn't quite work out for us. We ended up with way more candy than visitors and though we like all the flavors of candy, we just can't eat it all. 

In comes the Thanksgiving pot lucks. Why not make cookies with all our leftover Halloween candy? I searched through pinterest and punch fork and found these great recipes:

Fantastic Family Favorite's M&M cookie bars

Sugar Loco's Stuffed Cookies

Make-it-do's First Day of School Cookies

The mini cookies will be done in a later post but this time we're doing STUFFED COOKIES with M&M cookie dough! These are ridiculous! 

So I had to kind of combine two recipes. I used the an adjusted dough of both the cookies and then stuffed it in the method of Sugar Loco's recipe. 

This seemed like a lot of butter but it was only 3/4 of  Sugar Loco's recipe 

Just the wet ingredients, the sugar, eggs and vanilla - looks so good! 

Added the dry to have by dough. Hand stirring was a little more effort than I wanted to do but it was worth it! 

Added the M&M's to the dough. Eight fun sizes of your choice - remember, we're adding more candy in the end!

Per Sugar Loco's instructions, put a 3/4" ball on the bottom of a greased muffin tin. 

Add treat of choice.

Then cover with another 3/4' ball of dough. I did another Reese's and a Butterfinger (broke the Butterfinger in two to make it fit)

All three covered up and ready to go into the oven for 35 minutes

Out of the oven. Not quite the muffin apperance that Sugar Loco got. 

Let them cool for as long as you can - at LEAST 20 minutes! Then it'll come out all cute like this.

When you open it up, you can see the treat! 

I do NOT suggest Butterfingers. The core doesn't really melt and it turned into more of a candy in the middle. 

Recipe (adapted from Sugar Loco and Fantastic Family Favorite's:

• 2 1/8 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 12 TBSPs butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled slightly
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsps vanilla extract
• 7-8 fun size packets of M&M's 
• Candies to stuff inside the cookies (Reese's work best, Crunch bars, Oreos, Snickers, ets. I don't suggest Butterfingers)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Prepare a 12 cup muffin pan, by greasing with butter or pan spray.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
In a large bowl with an electric mixer, blend the granulated and brown sugars.  Add the butter and beat to form a grainy paste.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla, then beat at medium speed until fully combined.  Add the flour mixture and blend at low speed until just combined; do no over mix.  Fold in the M&Ms.
For each cookie, roll a 3/4 inch ball and press into the bottom of the muffin cups.  Press the treat of your choice into the center of the cookie.  Roll another 3/4 inch ball and cover the treat by pressing it over the top.
Place in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, checking every so often.  The wet appearance will disappear, and the cookies will look dry once they are done.  Pull out of the oven and let cool for about 15 minutes (even longer if you can) before attempting to remove them from the cups.

Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

I decided to make some peanut butter cookies with my vegan chocolate chip cookies. Why? Because the recipe was so simple! All I was missing was maple syrup (we don't do pancakes or waffles in our house). Since I had to go out and get vegan chocolate chips (not that great by the way) I figured pick this up and it would be cheaper than buying a batch of peanut butter cookies. 

Ingredients, so simple! Sugar I added to top the cookies.

Wet and Dry

As stated earlier, I do not like to use the mixer if I can help it. But mixing straight peanut butter is exercise!

Done after a short 10 minutes in the oven! I added chocolate chips as well. And I sprinkled sugar and cinnomon on top (that's what's melted on the foil)

These cookies got a "meh" from the crowd. Straight from the oven, they're delicious. But after sitting around for a bit, they get a bit chalky. I might try a second batch with some soy milk like the chocloate chips cookies? 

Recipe from 101cookbooks.com

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour, spelt flour, or unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 cup organic, chunky natural peanut butter
1 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Place racks in the top third.

In a medium mixing bowl combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. in a separate larger bowl combine the peanut butter, maple syrup, olive oil, and vanilla. Stir until combined. Pour the flour mixture over the peanut butter mixture and stir until barely combined - still a bit dusty looking. Let sit for five minutes, give one more quick stir, just a stroke or two. Now drop by heaping tablespoonfuls onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Press down on each one gently with the back of a fork. It's a loose batter, so if you're set on doing criss-crosses, go ahead and chill the batter for an hour or so before this step. Bake for 10, maybe 11 minutes - but don't over bake or they will be dry. Let cool five minutes and transfer to a cooling rack.

Make 2 - 3 dozen cookies. 

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have vegan friends. Yes, it's true. With all the meat and cheese and eggs I eat on a daily basis, it is hard to understand this lifestyle. But I love my friends and enjoy their company and when they come to my house, I like to have a treat for them as well. 

I decided to try to make some cookies for our most recent get together. After searching pinterst and punchfork, I found a great recipe on theppk.com. Why was it so great? No funky ingredients. Well, there was tapioca flour but after reading all the comments (like a good engineer), I discovered that corn starch was an excellent substitute for tapioca flour. Win! 

All the ingredients, note, I used evoo for oo. 

Mix of all the wet ingredients. Does your mix look different? Probably because I forgot to add the milk till the end! 

The completed dough before adding the chocolate chips

Done! They look just like "normal" cookies

They were really soft when they first came out of the oven. But after cooling, they were delicious! Why so few cookies? I only made a quarter of the recipe and fridged the rest! 

Yum! What's that you see? Peanut butter cookies? Yup, coming up in tomorrow's post! 

Chocolate Chip Cookies From ThePPK.com

Makes two dozen two inch cookies or about 16 three inch cookies

1/2 brown sugar
1/4 white sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk (or your favorite non-dairy milk)
1 tablespoon tapioca flour
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease two large light metal baking sheets.

Mix together sugars, oil, milk and tapioca flour in a mixing bowl. Use a strong fork and mix really well, for about 2 minutes, until it resembles smooth caramel. There is a chemical reaction when sugar and oil collide, so it’s important that you don’t get lazy about that step. Mix in the vanilla.

Add 1 cup of the flour, the baking soda and salt. Mix until well incorporated. Mix in the rest of the flour. Fold in the chocolate chips. The dough will be a little stuff so use your hands to really work them in.

For 3 inch cookies, roll the dough into about ping pong ball size balls. Flatten them out in your hands to about 2 1/2 inches. They will spread just a bit. Place on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes – no more than 9 – until they are just a little browned around the edges. I usually get 16 out of these so I do two rounds of eight cookies. Let cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

For 2 dozen two inch cookies roll dough into walnut sized balls and flatten to about 1 1/2 inches and bake for only six minutes.