Fat Friday: Candy Corn Cookies

I love Halloween!

As a Christian, I don't think I'm supposed to, but I can't help it. I think it's more about the sights and smells of fall than Halloween itself, but still. We don't do scary/gory/bloody corpses coming out of coffins. We do pumpkins and candy corn and smiley, friendly jack-o-lanterns. I love spicy-smelling candles and all the wonderful things we bake at this time of year. Things with apples and cinnamon and pumpkin.

And these cookies! I think they're going to be a Karenpie Halloween tradition - they were that fun to make.

I found the recipe on Tasty Kitchen last year and earmarked it to try later. Of course, later meant an entire year later. It's actually pretty amazing I even remembered it. But I'm so glad I found it again! These are the cutest darn cookies EVER. They're slightly high-maintenance but completely worth the effort.

Ready? Start with a sugar cookie recipe. You can use any you like. I like to use this one. I doubled the recipe and it was perfect. In addition to sugar cookie dough, you'll also need yellow and orange food coloring.

Let's get started!

Divide your dough into 3 equal portions. If you're OCD and have a kitchen scale it makes it easier. Each of my dough blobs weighed exactly a pound. Actually, if you aren't OCD and you have a kitchen scale, it will be easier.

On the other hand, if you are OCD and do not have a kitchen scale, you'll be paralyzed - completely unable to continue with these cookies - until you get one. Oh, and you'll be sucking your thumb in the fetal position too.

Good luck with that.

This concludes the empathetic segment of our broadcast.

Grab a loaf pan and line it with plastic wrap. If you slightly grease the pan it will keep the plastic wrap in place. Make sure the plastic wrap is long enough that it hangs over the sides of the pan.

Take one of the 3 dough blobs and pat it into the pan. Try to make it as level as possible.

Next, get your yellow food coloring out and color the 2nd blob. Don't you love my professional description? Blob. What a great word.

Put it on top of the white dough and pat it evenly into place.

You know what comes next, don't you? Uh-huh, get the orange food coloring and do the same thing to the final piece of dough. I mean blob.

Pat the orange dough on top of the yellow, for your third and final layer.

Is your arm tired from mixing food coloring into cookie dough? Mine was. Next time I plan on making three separate batches of cookie dough in my mixer and letting the mixer do the work.

Wrap it up and refrigerate it. I left mine overnight. The colder it is, the easier it is to work with because . . . .

- you're going to slice it in thin slices -

- and cut the slices into triangles.

Roll the triangles in sugar and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 8 minutes at 375F (if you're using my recipe) and . . .

Voila! Aren't these the cutest cookies ever? EVER?

When I first started baking them, I was cutting the slices a little too thick. As they baked they spread out too much and lost their shape. I finally figured out - on the last batch I cut - that I could flatten each strip with my rolling pin.

The final batch of cookies was a bit smaller and flatter. I liked them better because they baked more evenly and held the triangle shape better.

I'm telling you, it just doesn't get any cuter than this.