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.
These are great! I’m not a huge candy corn fan, but I’m thinking these would be a great compromise!
Movita – my husband, not a fan of the candy, loved them. You can even do a chocolate variation if you prefer, dipping the bottoms in chocolate (like the chocolate candy corns).
These are so adorable, I love candy corn!
These look amazing… plus they can probably be made using stevia. You make the best desserts! I was remembering your Oreo cupcakes today.
Thanks! Do you find you’re able to use Stevia ro other sugar substitutes often for baked goods?
How do they taste – like regular sugar cookies, or do you taste the orange flavor? I’m thinking orange-y sugar cookies would taste as great as these look! Thanks for the idea.
They taste like sugar cookies with a hint of orange! I’m sure you could up the orange flavoring for some more orangey goodness. I probably will next time, or even try lemon (I love lemon sugar cookies!).