Halloween Leftover Dump Cookies

If you’re anything like me, after Halloween you really don’t want to look at anymore candy.  BUT…there’s still a bunch of candy in the house.

Fortunately, while I may get tired of candy I never get tired of baked goods, so what I did was take some of my leftovers, add stuff I had in the pantry, and make what turned out to be a great cookie.

And the beauty of it is, you don’t need to have the exact ingredients I had – throw in whatever sounds good to you.  There’s very little chance you’ll “mess up” this recipe, so just have fun and be creative.  And, of course, enjoy!

• 2 ¼ cups flour
• 1 t baking soda
• ½ t baking powder
• ½ t salt
• 1 cup butter, softened to room temperature
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¾ cup dark brown sugar
• 2 t vanilla
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup semisweet chocolate chips *
• ½ cup butterscotch chips *
• ½ cup leftover candy corn *
• 1 full-sized snickers bar, chopped into small pieces (you can also use the minis as well)

* Here’s where you can be creative – use what you have.  I would suggest not having too many different flavor profiles in there because they’ll start to fight with one another, but I found that the 4 here worked incredibly well.[/recipe-ingredients]

Directions

Put the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a small bowl, whisk until well combined and set that aside.

Put the butter and sugar in a large bowl and mix with until well combined – about 3 minutes or a little longer.  Next, add in the eggs and vanilla and beat, and finally add in the flour mixture and continue to beat until everything is once again well combined.

Put away your mixer, add in all your leftover candies and stir with a wooden spoon until they’re evenly distributed.  Feel free to eat a couple before they get into the batter.  I mean, you’re only human.

Roll the dough into balls about the size of ping pong balls and put on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.  These will spread a bit, so you should probably put 6 to a sheet.

Be careful!  IF you use candy corn, make sure the candy is completely covered by dough.  The candy corn will melt a lot, and if you leave it sticking out you’ll get this:

Bake at 375 for about 10 minutes, until the cookies are a nice golden brown.  Take the sheets out of the oven and let the cookies rest on the sheets for another 5 minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes about 3 dozen or so cookies.