leftover halloween candy cookies

This is not a new concept. I am not the first one to ever put Halloween candy into a cookie. But it's a good concept. It's fun. And it's a great way to get rid of any lingering candy from the big night. The best part is that you can use your own favourite cookie recipe. So you'll know how the recipe works (you're not going to be walking into unknown territories here) and you'll (of course) love the added ingredients (you picked them, right?).

I'll be completely honest, though. I made these purposely for Idle Husband's office as a pre-Halloween treat, so I bought (just enough) Halloween themed candies to go into them. I wanted to make something Halloween-y for his office, and when I really thought about it, I realized that making these would be a lot easier and faster than, say, making an equal number of sugar cookies that then have to be carefully decorated with iced Halloween images and putting Halloween candy into a standard cookie recipe is just as festive when you think about it. So while I do like the little decorated, fancy pants cookies and cakes and what not, what I like even more is quick and easy. (It's good when you finally realize how you roll in the kitchen, isn't it?)

Oh!

I learned one important point through all of this. You must put candy corn into a cookie at least once in your lifetime.

I'm a huge candy corn fan, but I've never had them baked into something. What a mistake. Something wonderful happens. They're chewier? Tastier? I don't know what it is but it's delicious.

And did you know you can get them in blueberry booberry, too? NO?! Me neither! But there they are and they're really good. My only wish is that I could go back in time to chop up the candy corns and mix them into the cookies. I was a little nervous about how that would work out (plus not everyone likes candy corn), so I just pushed one on top of each cookie. Regrets...

I also included orange and black Smarties and Krackels (a crispy rice chocolate). I was going to add Oh Henry!s until I realized they have peanuts in them. If you're cool with peanuts (and the people you feed them to are cool with them), I bet big chunks of Oh Henry!s would have been really delicious. Ah dreams...and while I'm dreaming, can I be able to eat an infinite amount of cookies without any consequences? Thanks.

I used my usual whole wheat chocolate chip cookie recipe (minus the bacon! or plus it...I won't stop you) and chopped up the Krackels as if they were plain chocolate and mixed in the Smarties as normal. These are regular sized cookies so cooking them is a bit shorter. Around 6-8 minutes as opposed to the monster cookies. I prefer this recipe in monster size, but monster sized cookies aren't the best option for a crowd.

{handy tip} If you're using a cookie scooper and your dough keeps sticking, just dip the scoop into a bowl of water, shake the excess off, and continue scooping. You'll have to do this about every third scoop or so, but it's totally worth it. I love using a cookie scoop for the uniformity, but the dough always sticks and that's really irritating (plus it makes a handy device that should be making quick work of the job completely useless). I finally thought that since wetting my hands while shaping other sticky treats worked so well that maybe it would work with the scoop and it did!