Soft Batch Candy Corn GORP Cookies

Hi friends!  My name is Alisa Woods, and I’ve known Beth and Nick since our college days when we all had a few less kids and a little more free time. I’m a self-proclaimed baking addict, I’ve long considered pastry school, but between Craftsy and Netflix, I’m getting a pretty good education. So when Beth wanted to get together to bake cookies, I promptly took the day off, strapped my 1-year old daughter in the car and we met at our friend Angie’s house.

Between the three of us and four of our collective 6 ½ girls (Angie is pregnant), we had plenty of help in the kitchen baking up these soft batch cookies.  I can’t tell you how many times we each said, “Just one more piece of candy.” To both ourselves and our babes. 

These cookies are stuffed with what I call GORP, which stands for “Good Old Raisins and Peanuts”, but let’s be honest, raisins are a dirty word around Halloween.  You don’t want to be that house that hands out raisins during Trick or Treat.  We always say that my mom, one year, handed out Brussels Sprouts for Halloween.  The truth is, we had them for dinner and no one ate them, so she jokingly offered them to a neighbor kid who apparently loved vegetables and took them all.  Honestly, I love Brussels Sprouts now, but 8-year-old me was disgusted. 

For my GORP, I mix M&Ms, candy corn and honey roasted peanuts.  I’ve been making this mix every fall since high school.  If you get the right ratio of everything in your mouth (2 M&Ms, 1 peanut and 1 candy corn) it tastes like a Snickers.  Take this fall mix, and stuff it in a soft, gooey, sweet cookie, and tell me you miss the raisins. 

Take a handful of GORP, and preheat that oven to 350 F.

I cream the butter and sugars together for 1-2 minutes.  You want them to be well acquainted with each other.

Then I add in the vanilla and give it another good mix. 

The egg and egg yolk is a trick I learned from Alton Brown of the Food Network.  If he puts an egg and an egg yolk in his chocolate chip cookies, well then I put it in all of my cookies. 

This is the last chance to really get these ingredients mixed well.  Once you start adding flour, you don’t want to over-mix.  Go ahead and grab another handful of GORP. 

To the mixer, I add the flour, baking soda and corn starch.  The corn starch is another science trick I like to use in my cookies.  At the very basic level, the gluten in flour forms long structures, and when you add corn starch, it forces the gluten to create different shapes, and thus creating a more tender cookie. 

The GORP mix comes in now, a cup of each.  I give the mixer a good whirl, but not enough to destroy all of the candy corns and M&Ms.  If you have strong hands, mixing these in by hand might not be a bad idea.  As a reward for the workout, you can also have another handful of GORP.

I like the 4.5 or 5 cm cookie scoops for these cookies.  You have to make sure you get enough of the good stuff in each cookie!

And you might need to do a little surgery to the cookies before you place them on the cookie sheet.  You don’t want the candy corn to be touching the sheet, or it will stick like the dickens. So just patch up the candy corn that’s showing.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. I like to take them out when they’re still slightly glossy on top and just barely browned around the edges and then I let them sit on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes.  It’s brutal, but waiting that long is crucial if you want a round cookie as opposed to smooshed oval cookie.  So grab a handful of GORP while you wait.

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened 
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup M&Ms
• 1 cup honey roasted peanuts
• 1 cup candy corn

 

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  In your mixer, cream butter, sugar and brown sugar.  Add egg, egg yolk and vanilla and mix well. 

To the sugar mixture, add flour, baking soda, corn starch and salt.  Mix just until combined. Don’t overmix!

Add in M&Ms, peanuts and candy corn and mix until just combined.  You might even want to just hand-mix these in so you get them mixed in but don’t overmix the dough. 

Drop cookies on a cookie tray and bake for 8-10 minutes.  Let the cookies sit on the cookie tray after you remove them from the oven for a few minutes. 

Makes 2 dozen.

Don’t these cookies look amazing?  Alisa is so talented! Be sure to go follow her on Facebook and Instagram.