Trick or Treat?

Oh, of course I choose treat!


I made these for Aaron and I instead of buying candy because we don't get trick-or-treaters at our apartment. They're chocolatey and delicious, best slightly warm yet great at room temperature, and a fantastic accompaniment for a cup of coffee. At one point yesterday Aaron looked at me and said, "Tell me to stop eating these because otherwise there won't be any left within the hour." I guess this means he likes them. Here's the recipe:

Halloween Cookies
Source: Everyday Food, October 2006

Makes 40 to 50*
Prep time: 35 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling and cutting out dough
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. salt
12 Tbsp. (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
small candies or sprinkles for decorating (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy; beat in egg. On low spead, mix in flour mixture. Divide dough in half, and form into 2 disks, each about 3/4 inch thick. wrap disks in plastic; chill until firm, at least 45 minutes and up to 2 days.

On a lightly floured sheet of waxed paper, using a floured rolling pin, roll dough 1/4 inch thick. (If dough becomes too soft to work with, refrigerate fora few minutes.)

Using 2- to 3-inch Halloween cookie cutters, cut out hapes, dipping cutters in flour as necessary to prevent sticking; place on a baking sheet, spacing them 1 inch apart.

Bake until surface is dry to the touch, 10 to 15 minutes (if decorating, press candies into dough halfway through baking).** Cool cookies 1 to 2 minutes on baking sheet; transfer to a rack to cool completely. Serve, or store in an airtight container up to 3 days.***

*We only got about 30 cookies out of this recipe and this includes those made by the last little scraps of dough that I just pressed into circles.
**I didn't do this step, as it just seemed too fussy. I thought about icing them, but they're sweet enough as is.
***Damn, I guess I should get to eating them then. What a great excuse to pig out on cookies!

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Another note on treats: I really miss trick-or-treating. Not so much the dressing up and going door-to-door aspect, but the variety of candy you get. To get that variety nowadays I'd have to spend a fortune. My absolute favorite candy to get were mini-Snickers. I love Snickers bars. I also, weirdly, really liked those little peanut-butter flavored taffy-like candies that were wrapped in either black or orange. You know the ones I'm talking about? I love those things!

My least favorite to get, and therefore the candy my dad was hoping for, were Good 'n' Plentys - those pink and white black licorice candies. For some reason those were the candy of choice for many people handing out candy in our neighborhood, so my dad usually got quite the cache of these every Halloween because none of us kids liked them.

Other than those, I was fairly indifferent to the candy I got, but, of course, would eat it all, saving one Snickers bar for very last (unless my dad got to my candy first and then he'd eat the Snickers and there would be hell to pay!). So, what was your favorite candy at Halloween? What do you hand out to trick-or-treaters? We usually give chocolate - typicall Snickers bars and Peanut M&Ms. Although now that Take 5 (aka perfect PMS food) is out and in mini-size, those will probably be what I hand out in the future.

Damn, now I really want some chocolate. Happy Halloween everyone!