Candy corn cookies

It's October and Halloween is coming up. Yes, All Hallows Eve, so named because it is the day before All Saints' Day. And you know what that means...

CATHOLIC DESSERT TIME!

Yes! It has been too long (like, two whole weeks)! So here's what I made yesterday. I'll type up the recipe if anyone wants it; otherwise we'll just have pictures which you can always click for bigger versions. (UPDATE: recipe is here.)

First I assembled an intriguing cast of characters. (Ignore the cherry tomatoes. An unrelated recipe.)


Now just pause for a moment and meditate on how many of life's blessings begin with butter and sugar creamed together.


Adding some other stuff to the butter/sugar mix. Isn't it convenient that eggs are individually date-stamped now? All these great innovations; young people today don't appreciate it.


I added egg, flour, vanilla, salt, and baking powder to the dough.


I then divided it into three portions. One portion will be left plain.


Another gets put back into the mixer. I threw in some chopped walnuts.


Now for the most fun ingredient: food coloring. This is concentrated paste instead of liquid, so you can get intense color without watering down your recipe.


You can buy it at cake stores, arts and crafts stores, places like that. I got mine in orange. Looks like this.



I just used a toothpick to slap some on the dough.


And mixed it in.


And to get really fancy, orange extract. Not too much; just enough to make the eater wonder, "Does this orange part of the cookie actually taste orange, or am I imagining it?"


Mmmm... nice orange walnut dough.


Moving on now to CHOCOLATE. I switched to the last third of dough, melted a square of unsweetened chocolate, and mixed it in. Most rewarding.


The chocolate dough tasted so good that I was briefly tempted to just make a bunch of chocolately chocolate cookies.


But no, I'll stick to my plan. Here are my three kinds of dough. They make a lovely tableau. See where I'm going with this now?


Here's a pan for baking small loves of bread. I lined it with wax paper, cutting out the corners for convenience.


Then I threw the chocolate dough in there...


And spread it out.


The spreading out was hard, actually. It's much easier if you spoon out the dough in pieces, like I'm doing with the orange dough to spread it on top of the chocolate.


Vanilla dough goes on last.


Then fold over the wax paper and you have a lovely and most promising little package.


I chilled it for an hour or two in the fridge, then got it out along with some parchment paper and cookie sheets.



Here's my dough all wrapped up.


Let's unwrap it and cut a slice!


Now what can we do with this?


Slice it up into triangles, like the bodies of the apostles at the Last Supper! (Inside joke for blog readers.)

Repeat many times and lay out on cookie sheets.


Now you see where I was going with it. Little candy corn cookies, not much bigger than real candy corn. Behold the cuteness!


And here's the same sheet after baking for eight minutes.


Now that is adorable.



I turned over a couple so you could see the underside.


To concentrate the cuteness I stacked them in a cupcake box.


Closeup for quality inspection.


Oh yes. This is why I never lose any weight. CANDY CORN COOKIES!