Easter bunny candy photo credit to www.health.com
One of my Pet Peeves in this life is people giving my children candy all the time. I even dislike getting candy from stores,banks and even Grandma. I know this makes me the “MEAN” mom… The one who says no to a lot of free junk food, but I feel it is my job to watch out for my family and their teeth. I come from a family with genetically soft teeth. We don’t get cancer or strokes, we just suffer from cavities on huge scale. Even with proper dental care my siblings and children just have more overall oral health problems then most.
When Easter rolls around I cringe at the thought of all those chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, and Peeps. I have over the years tossed out thousands of dollars of candy given to my two sons as gifts. This year was unusually bad when it came to chocolate. My younger son received around 3 pounds of chocolate in the form of bunnies, crosses and M&Ms. This does not include the Ring Pops,Gummy Bears, the malted eggs or Peeps found in his baskets. People, theirs a limit to how much candy a four-year old should eat.
So after receiving all that chocolate, I just started freezing it. I knew that at some point it could be used later. This Mothers Day seemed like a good time use up some of my hidden stash. Christopher and I made chocolate chunk cookies for the holiday and with the help of 6 adults and 2 kids we all enjoyed the chocolate.
I have named these cookies “Easter Chunk Cookies”.
cooling Easter Chunk Cookies
My recipe comes from the “Better Homes and Gardens” New Cook Book of 1981 and 1992 publication, page# 128. Gather all the ingredients and begin to warm the chocolate if frozen.
everything except chocolate
.
I have to admit that I make cookies all in one bowl just like my mother, so my photos of the process may appear backward to what is the “Correct” way to add ingredients to the mix. Mom,I make them just the way that you taught me.
creamed sugar butter and adding eggs
Frist into the bowl is butter and shortening at room temp, then the white and brown sugar. Cream together until light and fluffy. I then add eggs and vanilla and salt cream them into butter mixture. I then add 1 cup of flour and mix, then baking soda and then the rest of flour and mix well . Then I add the chocolate, nuts and candy.
chopping up chocolate
As you can see above the chocolate Crosses are thin and even with three they only produced about a cup of chunks. So, I added more left over candy, in this case mini M&Ms from Christmas. The two together made about a 1 1/2 cups of chocolate and then added a cup of chopped nuts to the batter.
everything combined and ready to drop on cookie sheet
I dropped a tablespoon of mixture on a cookie sheet and baked them at 375, for about 10 minutes about 2 inches apart. The dough is soft and chewy in the middle but crispy and lightly brown on the bottom. We ended up with about 2 1/2 dozen cookies and I spent nothing for any of the chocolate and that saved me about 4 dollars on one batch.
I still have about 1 and 1/2 pounds of left over chocolate in the freezer and a huge bag of jellybeans. So more ideas to come.
Here is the ingredients for my “Easter Chunk Cookies”.
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup Crisco shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups chocolate chunks and or colored mini M&Ms
1 cup chopped nuts.
I hope that the next Easter candy recipe that I post is for Jelly Beans and what to do with 2 pounds of them. Maybe by July, I will have used most of them up and shared them a company picnic or some other large group gathering.
West Virginia Mountain Mama 