As usual, I couldn’t resist the lure of all the Halloween magazines in the rack at the checkout. If I have time, I’ll do a roundup. For now, here’s one idea I had to try: Candy Corn Cookies from Gooseberry Patch Best of Halloween 2014. They blogged about a similar recipe a while ago, but theirs is much simpler. In fact, it’s so simple I’m going to go ahead and share it, since there’s nothing here that isn’t very, very basic.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- Yellow and orange food coloring
Cream the butter and sugar together, then blend in the vanilla and egg. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl then incorporate them slowly. Line a baking sheet with parchment, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Yes, I am fussy enough to use a scale.
Divide the dough into three equal parts.
Pretty!
Color one part yellow and one part orange. Use plenty of food coloring.
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Roll each color into 3/4″ logs. I worked with half of each color at a time. The dough is very soft, but not sticky. It is not something you roll vigorously. A combination of squeezing and gentle rolling will do the trick.
Stripes! Call Tim Burton!
Push the rolls against each other as firmly as you can without mooshing them out of shape. The recipe says to blend slightly on top. That won’t work.
Cutting the cookies mostly evenly. Mostly.
Cut the cookies into candy corn shapes.
Moosh
Before you put the cookies in the pan, turn them over gently in your hand, and blend the colors on the bottom as much as you can. They’ll still be delicate, but they’ll hang together somewhat.
Ready to bake
These cookies don’t spread, so you can put them fairly close together, like I didn’t.
These gems have a wonderful texture. They are very buttery, and not over-sweet. If I were to make them again, I would add a touch of orange zest to the orange section, and lemon zest to the yellow section, for more flavor.
Also, they are very pretty:
