Halloween Cookies!

Well these turned out MUCH better than the soup I made earlier in the week! There's been a couple of Fridays now at work where I've brought in baked goods. I think both times it was brownies. . . anyway, earlier this week, one of my students said to me, "So Melanie, I was thinking, since Halloween is on Saturday you should maybe make some kind of Halloween treat for us on Friday!" Because I really like this student, I said, Yeah, okay, why not. While you can go all kinds of crazy with Halloween baking (see Jenni's future post that I'm already jealous of!) I decided that for a weekday thing, for just my students, I would go for something easy that makes a lot: COOKIES!

My initial thought was chocolate cookies with orange and brown M&Ms. I didn't see any orange and brown M&Ms at the grocery store though. What I DID see however was Reese's Pieces, and since those are already Halloween colors, I bought them. After all, chocolate and peanut butter together is NEVER a bad idea.

I found this decadent recipe online for Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies and substituted 1 1/2 cups Reese's pieces for the 2 cups of chocolate chips, and I didn't use any of the optional walnuts. The only slight snafu was that the dough was really thick. I made it in my stand mixer and decided when it came time to add the candy at the end that I would just toss them in there as well. Luckily I only started with one cup. I added them in, put the mixer on the lowest setting, "stir," and they got crushed! Of course this wouldn't effect the flavor but I wanted to see the orange and yellow in the dark cookie. So I mixed the remaining half cup by hand. Also, I ran out of Hershey's cocoa powder but luckily had Ghirardelli cocoa on hand as well. The Ghirardelli is Dutch Processed unsweetened cocoa, which is darker and richer than the regular kind (I think I wanted it for a marble cake and/or chocolate ice cream at some point and that's why I had it). I can't say I wouldn't use the Ghirardelli next time as well! Boy is it good.

To say that these cookies are delicious would be an understatement. And having them warm out of the oven? CHOCOLATE AND PEANUT BUTTER HEAVEN!!! :)