Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Candy Corn Cookies


Candy Corn Cookies
Basic Recipe by Land O' Lakes and the idea for the adaptation from - Sweet Sugar Belle

2 sticks of butter, softened
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons almond extract
2 teaspoons orange juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add in the egg, vanilla, almond extract, and orange juice.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking soda. Then begin to mix into the other ingredients in small stages. This will keep you from wearing all of the dry mixture. (I had this experience the first time)

One the dough is combined, portion out in three bowls. I used a 1/4 cup to make sure that I got evenly portioned dough. From here you can complete the cookies as I made them... or you can go a different route.

To complete as I made them:
Mix yellow food coloring into 1/3 of the dough. Mix orange food coloring into 1/3 of the dough. Leave the last remaining portion of the dough without and coloring. (I used Americolor Food Color for mine) Once you get the colors mixed, you will use a 9x5 (or 8.5 x 4.5) loaf pan to combine the dough. Line the pan with wax paper or plastic wrap... then take the white dough and press into the bottom of the pan. You will then press the orange dough on top of the white, and finish with the yellow on the top. Cover the dough with the remaining plastic wrap or wax paper. It will look something like this:






Let the dough sit in the refrigerator to let the butter get hard again... this will make the cookies easy to slice and bake. I let mine sit overnight. The next morning, I pulled my dough out of the pan (the above photo was at that step) and prepared to slice them for baking. I sliced off a piece, and then slice again in diagonals to make the candy corn triangles. Like the photo below.


Transfer to a cookie sheet, you can put a bunch on the pan because they don't spread much if at all. I will dust mine with a good sanding sugar next time. Bake on 375 for 7-10 minutes. (8 minutes did the trick for mine)

I can totally see myself doing these for other holidays too - in different shapes... but you could do some Easter Egg type ones... red and green with white for Christmas... red, white and blue... you name it!

To adapt the recipe so that all the cookies look like real candy corn:

You make the cookies just as the recipe states, but instead of dying 1/3 of the dough yellow... leave it white... you'll end up with white on the bottom, orange in the middle, and white on the top. Slice and bake as I did... but then you will get some yellow melting chocolate, and dip the bottom end of each cookie into the melted chocolate. The link to the Sweet Sugar Belle blog did hers that way, and you can go take a look at how she did them for more specific instructions.
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Monday, October 10, 2011

Peanut Butter Dip






Peanut Butter Dip
Recipe adapted from Taste of Home.com

1 cup smooth peanut butter
3 (6 oz) containers vanilla yogurt
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips (or as many as desired)

This recipe is so simple, I just mixed all of the ingredients together. I started with the peanut butter and mixed in 1 container of the yogurt at a time. It takes a minute to get it to combine into a smooth mixture. Then add the cinnamon and chocolate chips. I served with pretzel sticks, graham crackers, and apple slices. (Sorry the picture isn't great... it was served at my son's 1st birthday party.)
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