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Arts & Entertainment

Compost Cookies, The Perfect Use for Leftover Easter Candy

This unusual but delicious cookie recipe combines spring cleaning with baking

If your household is anything like mine, you’ve still got plenty of Easter candy lying around.  Sometimes I will find one of those little pastel foil-wrapped chocolate eggs at the back of my pantry in July!  

Easter candy just seems to hang around forever (probably because I hide it from my children to ration it, and then forget about it).  If you’d like to get rid of your Easter candy without throwing it out or consuming it on the couch while watching Dancing with the Stars, then this is the perfect recipe for you!

Best of all, with this recipe, you can combine cookie making with spring cleaning. Pull everything out of your pantry, discard the expired items, wipe down the shelves, and then put everything back in an organized fashion.  Be sure to leave out those half-eaten bags of chips and pretzels, open sleeves of crackers and boxes of cereal with just a tiny bit at the bottom that no one will finish, but you feel guilty about throwing out.  These items are for the cookies.  At the end of the day, not only will you feel great about your clean pantry, you will have these awesome cookies to share!

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This cookie was featured on LIVE! with Regis and Kelly last year when the creator of the recipe, Cristina Tosi,  a pastry chef and the owner of  New York sweets eatery Momofuku's Milk Bar, appeared on the show. It really is a brilliant idea, and if you follow the directions carefully, you’ll end up with a surprisingly delicious cookie.

To my cookies, I added the dregs of three or four bags of breakfast cereal that no one seemed to want to finish, some pretzels on their way to being stale, a crushed bag of potato chips, an opened sleeve of butter crackers, three opened bags of baking chips that didn't hold enough to make a recipe (white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and peanut butter chips), plus lots of Easter candy. This sounds like a strange combination, but the formula really works.

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Compost Cookies as seen on LIVE with Regis and Kelly

Ingredients:

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 Tbsp corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 -3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp Kosher salt
1 -1/2 cups of your favorite baking ingredients (Ex. mini chocolate chips, Raisinettes, Rolos, breakfast cereal and chopped/crushed leftover Halloween, Christmas, or Easter candy)
1 -1/2 cups of your favorite snack foods (Ex. chips, pretzels, Goldfish and  Ritz crackers, Fritos)

Directions:
In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter, sugars and corn syrup on medium high for 2-3 minutes until fluffy and pale yellow in color. Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl with a spatula.

On a lower speed, add eggs and vanilla to incorporate. Increase mixing speed to medium-high and start a timer for 10 minutes. During this time the sugar granules will fully dissolve, the mixture will become an almost pale white color and your creamed mixture will double in size.

When time is up, on a lower speed, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix 45-60 seconds, just until your dough comes together and all remnants of dry ingredients have incorporated. Do not walk away from your mixer during this time or you will risk over-mixing the dough. Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl with a spatula.

On same low speed, add in the hodgepodge of your favorite baking ingredients and mix for 30-45 sec until they evenly mix into the dough. Add in your favorite snack foods last, paddling again on low speed until they are just incorporated.

Using a 6 oz. ice cream scoop (or a 1/3 c. measuring cup), portion cookie dough onto a parchment lined sheet pan. Wrap scooped cookie dough tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour or up to 1 week. DO NOT BAKE the cookies from room temperature or they will not hold their shape.

Heat the conventional oven to 400F (350F in a convection oven). When the oven reads 400F, arrange your chilled cookie dough balls on a parchment or silpat-lined sheet pan a minimum of 4 inches apart in any direction. Bake for 9-11 min. While in the oven, the cookies will puff, crackle and spread. At 9 min., the cookies should be browned on the edges and just beginning to brown towards the center. Leave the cookies in the oven for the additional minutes if these colors don't match up and your cookies stills seem pale and doughy on the surface.

Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pan before transferring to a plate or an airtight container or tin for storage. At room temp, cookies will keep fresh five days. In the freezer, cookies will keep fresh one month.

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