Leftover Halloween Candy? Bake It Into These
November 1st delivers America its annual surplus: three pounds of fun-size candy nobody plans to eat sober. Bakers know the truth — Halloween candy is pre-portioned baking chips with better marketing.
Match the candy to the bake
| Candy type | Best use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Chocolate bars (Snickers, Kit Kat, Twix) | Chopped into blondies and cookies | Caramel and wafer survive the oven as pockets |
| Filled chocolates (Kinder, Reese's) | Stuffed inside cookie dough | The molten-center effect of Kinder stuffed cookies |
| M&Ms | Surface studding | The shell keeps its color and crunch |
| Gummies, Skittles, hard candy | Never bake | They melt into lava, then set into dental work |
The three destination recipes
A batch of chewy blondies absorbs two cups of chopped anything-chocolate; oatmeal cookies take chopped bars in place of chips one-for-one; and s'mores cookie bars welcome fun-size chocolate as the middle layer it always dreamed of becoming.
Two technical notes
Chop everything to chocolate-chip size and freeze the pieces 20 minutes before mixing — cold candy holds its shape instead of bleeding caramel through the dough. And add candy-heavy dough to the fridge for 30 minutes so the bake does not spread flat — the physics are explained in why cookies spread, one shelf over in this same library.
