Caramel Candy Corn Cookies

My husband and I were at Target early in the fall season. Since we can’t just stick with what we plan to get when we’re at Target, we’d wandered over to the Halloween display to see what sort of awesome things they were offering that we’d certainly need to buy. In their little baking section, they had some cupcake toppers, but I’d already made something with those. My husband spotted the bag of mini candy corns and told me that I could make some cookies. Ok, sounds good. I like candy corn, despite its sickly sweetness, and I obviously like cookies.

There were candy corn cookies on the bag, so I thought I would go to the company’s website to find what recipe they used. Well, their website was useless. I went to my old standby Pinterest, and found a couple of recipes. Of course most of those were cookies that looked like candy corn, which wasn’t right at all. These cookies sounded good, with candy corn and caramel. I used the mini candy corns in place of chopped up candy corn, and used caramel bits instead of chopping up caramel squares.

This dough is very quick to come together, as it is basically a chocolate chip cookie recipe with no chocolate chips. The original recipe included cinnamon and nutmeg, but I just added the small amount of cinnamon. I wasn’t sure that I wanted these to be so spiced. The post said not to overbake, or the candy corn would melt everywhere, and well, that happened anyway. I checked half way through the baking time and they were melted. Oh well, that only happened on some cookies, where the candy corn was near the edge. While many of the cookies looked a little messy, they did taste good. I was surprised how well the cinnamon paired with the candy corn! So these weren’t the biggest success, but still a very tasty cookie.

Caramel Candy Corn Cookies

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

3/4 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

1 3/4 cups flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/3 cup mini candy corn

¼ cup caramel bits

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter, sugar, and brown sugar on medium until smooth. Add the vanilla and egg and beat on medium to incorporate. Add the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon and stir on low until the flour is nearly incorporated. Stir in the mini candy corn and caramel bits with a spatula.

Shape the dough into 1-1/4” balls. Place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until lightly browned along the edges. Cool on the cookie sheets for at least 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Recipe from The Real Housewives of Riverton