Food and Sanity: Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate, Cookies!

Valentine's Day is over, and that means discounted chocolate! Seriously, there is nothing cuter than my husband on Friday, coming home with three bags of peanut butter cups. In addition to the chocolates I bought him the day before Valentine's Day, my parents sent us a care package full of heart shaped chocolates, heart shaped junior mints, and one moderate sized white chocolate bear. The message here is that we have a LOT of candy.

Now, if left to our own devices, we would eat all this candy entirely too quickly. To slow our impending diabetic comas, I have concocted a brilliant plan of pure genius. I call it the Candy Compost Bag!

To keep us happy and not completely deprived of chocolate, I took a small selection of nicer chocolates and put them aside for consumption over the next week. I then took all the rest, unwrapped them, chopped them into little bits and put them in a large ziplock bag in the freezer! Observe.

Here you see two coconut cream candies. Nobody wants to eat them. They are sad

Hiya! I chopped them up with ninja swiftness!

Here they are, combined with other chopped up candy. Now they have friends!

"But, Samantha," you say, "What good are these mangled little morsels of chocolate?" Well, I'll tell you. I now have a magical source of chips for cookies!!!

Use your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I like to use the original Toll House Cookie recipe and add half a pack of instant vanilla pudding for an extra chewy result. Then just add chopped candies instead of chocolate chips!

I'm so jazzed to make cookies tonight! I plan on using half candy bits and half cranberries. They are going to turn out delicious.