After Halloween Cookies

I have my church women's group on Monday nights and I usually volunteer to bring refreshments. I love to cook and bake and it's one way to give me a creative outlet without expanding my waist line any further than it already is. Since Halloween was last week I knew exactly what I was going to make for tonight's meeting: After Halloween Cookies. What are they? Tasty little treats chock full of chocolaty goodness. There a few different base cookies you can use...sugar, oatmeal, even peanut butter, but I went with chocolate chip. Instead of adding chips though, I used chopped up candy. Delicious! And lest you think I took candy from my kids bags, I purchased it after Halloween for more than 50% off at my CVS :) Do you have candy to use up? Here's the recipe:

After Halloween Cookies

Cookie Dough*
2 cups chopped up candy**

As mentioned, I used a chocolate chip cookie dough sans chips. It's the same one on a Nestle bag, but just in case you're out of chocolate chips, here it is.

*Cream together 2 sticks (1 cup) of butter with 3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar. Add two eggs and blend well. Add a tsp of vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and a dash of salt. Add to the creamed mixture. You can do this in increments but I'm a rebel and just throw it all in.Stir in your chopped up candy. Now you can do one of two things. The first is, you can drop by spoonfuls on a cookie sheet and bake them at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes *or* if you're feeling quite lazy pressed for time, you can press the mixture into a greased jelly roll pan (I just used a cookie sheet), and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

I was thinking that this would be good for other holidays too, especially Valentine's...one of those heart shaped boxes of assorted chocolates. yum!

 ** Chocolate candy works best in this recipe. I do not recommend using hard candy or anything gummi. I also don't recommend Kit Kats. The wafers don't really translate well into the cookie. For these cookies, I used a mix of Resee's, 3 Musketeers, Snickers, Hershey bars, Cookies and Cream, and Milky Way.

Enjoy!