Candy corn is like cilantro — you either love it or you don’t. Me? I’m a semi fan. I can eat probably about 6 pieces before feeling a sugar high, crashing and then feeling sick. My husband isn’t a fan at all. So, to get in the spirit of Halloween, I decided to make some candy corn cookies — without any candy corn involved!

I found the recipe online, pinned it, and have been looking for the perfect day to make it (you need to set aside a decent chunk of time – you need to refrigerate the dough for at least a few hours or overnight, plus the actual forming of the dough into candy corn-like cookies takes time as well).

So, get ready and get baking! This week is the perfect time to get yor candy corn cookies baking:

Candy Corn Cookies

(Adapted from Land O Lakes website)

You’ll need:

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons orange juice (I just squeezed my own from about a half an orange)
• 2 teaspoons freshly grated orange zest
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• Orange food color (I mixed yellow with red because I didn’t have orange at home)
• Yellow food color
•  1/2 cup sugar

Here’s what you’ll do:

• Line the inside of a 9×5-inch breadloaf pan with waxed plastic wrap.
• Mix butter with 1 cup sugar, beat until creamy.
• Add egg, orange juice, orange zest and salt to butter/sugar mixture. Continue beating until well mixed.
• Mix together flour and baking soda. Add by 1/2 c portions to the wet ingredients. Beat until fully mixed.
• Divide dough into thirds. Press one-third of white dough evenly onto bottom of prepared pan.
• Place another third of dough back into the bowl and add yellow food color. Mix until blended and set the dough aside.
• Place the final third of dough back into the bowl and add the yellow and red food coloring (or orange, if you have it). I used probably a ratio of 8:1 drops of yellow to red coloring to create an orange ball of dough.
• Press the orange dough evenly over white dough in pan. Press yellow dough evenly over orange dough in pan.
• Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until hard(at least 2 hours or overnight).
• Place 1/2 cup sugar in large bowl and set aside.
• Heat oven to 375°F. Invert loaf pan to remove dough. Peel off plastic wrap and place layered dough onto cutting surface.
• Cut loaf crosswise into 1/4-inch slices. Cut each slice into 6 candy corn shaped wedges. Dip wedges in sugar and then place onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake for about 9 – 10 minutes, until edges are firm and bottoms just turning light brown.
• Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets. Immediately place warm cookies sugar bowl again; roll in sugar to coat.
• Cool cookies completely on wire cooling rack.

Enjoy!

Before: the dough out of the pan, ready to be sliced.

After: