Candy-Filled Weekend

I make candy for my co-workers and friends. This way I don’t have to worry about spending oodles of money on oodles of people and they don’t have to worry about feeling guilty about what I may have spent or how they will re-gift without me knowing.

It’s typically a two-day project, not including the evening (in front of the TV of course) I spend decorating the candy boxes with stamped decorations and gift tags. Saturday is usually the day I pound the shit out of the cookies and mix them with room temperature cream cheese (now I know why women from the early to mid-1900’s had such strong biceps and hands before the advent of pre-fab food!). Sunday is when I cut, roll, and dip the candies in chocolates. This year, I left out rolling the cubes into balls, too lazy and I didn’t want to take the time as I still had to make the Martha Stewart-like key on a tag so the people can tell what color flower indicates what flavor.

I added a new flavor this year, the Vanilla Cream Sandwich cookie (white), to my typical flavors of Oreo (blue), NutterButter (orange), Mint Grasshoppers (green), Chips Ahoy Choc Chip (pink – they taste just like choc chip cookie dough encased in choc!), and Pecan Sandies (yellow). Next year I want to try the Lemon Wafers.

My brother called while I was in the process of filling the boxes so I think everyone got at least 3-4 of each flavor. I filled 14 Chinese take-out boxes to the brims and have a plethora of leftovers to pad myself with plenty of holiday fat.

Here’s the recipe if you are interested in making some awesome homemade candies that taste like they should be in a mucho-expensive store…

Chocolate Candies

Ingredients:
*Rule of thumb: 1 pound of cookies to 1 pkg of room temp cream cheese
*Cookies can be any dryish or sandwich type cookie (see above for my flavors).
Note: DO NOT use any “double stuff” sandwich cookie – it’s too moist, wet is more like it.
*Chocolate for dipping the balls into (I typically use the Nestle’s Mini-Chocolate Chips – they melt faster than the big ones) and canning wax to thin the chocolate a bit.
Note: Plan on at least 1 ½ to 2 bags per flavor.
*Cat hair is optional (like I have a choice!!)

How to:
1) Crush 1 lb pkg of cookies in a tough plastic Ziploc bag until they are the consistency of potting soil. (A rolling pin works nicely for this.)
2) Cube the room temperature softened cream cheese into the bowl of crushed cookies.
3) Mix/mush it all together with your hands. Should make a nice solid ball a bit bigger than a softball.
4) Flatten ball out so it’s a rectangle or square about 1 inches high.
5) Put rectangle or square in bag you crushed the cookies in and chill in fridge overnight.
6) Next day… while chocolate is melting, cut up the cookie rectangle or square into 1 inch cubes.
7) When chocolate is ready, dip each cube in it and set aside on a foil covered cookie sheet.
8) Put completed choc-covered cubes back in the fridge so chocolate can stiffen up.
9) Once chocolate has hardened, you can transfer your candies to another more suitable container for storage.
10) EAT.