Candy Wrap-Ups Recipe

Quality Time with Grandma and Nana

Baked by Dana and Megan, with love!

On Wednesday, September 12, we had a very special occasion that called for a very special dessert.  Our Nana had flown in from California to visit family here in Ohio, and we decided that it would be really special if we could take both of our grandmothers out to dinner together!  We rarely get to see our Nana, but she and our Grandma write letters to each other all the time, so they're long-time friends.  We are so blessed to have the grandmothers we do.  They are the sweetest women on the planet, and are always there for us whenever we need anything.  So after we took them to dinner, we all went back to our parent's house to spend some more time together over coffee and cookies.  Our Nana loves to take pictures, and loves to show them off even more, so we all got to look at many pictures of our California family that we haven't seen in years.  It's crazy how quickly things change, being that the last time we were all together was over 10 years ago.  It was so nice having her here with us, and we miss her already!

Since everyone was coming back to the house to visit, we thought: "We need to make something blog-worthy!"  We searched the internet for a spectacular dessert that wouldn't take too long to make, being that we only had about 3 hours to bake it.  We stumbled across a few great cookie recipes, but decided on Candy Wrap-Ups! (We came up with this name because we kind of didn't like the name it previously had.."Bikini Killers" didn't sound very appealing.)

This whole process was certainly interesting.  It seemed something different went wrong for each batch, but luckily we could still serve them all (except one...we forgot to set a timer. Oops!).  We made some alterations to the original recipe we found, so we're going to write the ingredients and directions the way we did it.  So with no further adieu, here is the recipe for Candy Wrap-Ups!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 16 tbs (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ¾ tsp salt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• ~12 mini Snickers bars
• 2 Reese's Chocolate Bars (this equals 12 sectioned pieces. We used this because it is not as big as a normal Reese's cup, but slightly bigger than a mini cup. It fit perfectly inside a cookie!)

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees F.
2. Combine flour and baking soda in a small bowl. Whisk together and set aside.
3. Place 10 tablespoons butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted.  Use the handle of the pan to swirl the butter around in the skillet.  Swirl butter constantly over the heat until it becomes a dark golden brown in color and gives off a nutty smell.  (This part seemed to take forever! We had never browned butter before and weren't quite sure what would happen. It was difficult to see when the transparent yellow of the melted butter turned brown against the black, nonstick surface of the skillet. The smell will be the first to change.) Remove skillet from heat and transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl.  Stir the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter into the hot butter until completely melted.

4. Add granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla to brown butter mixture and whisk until fully incorporated. Add eggs and whisk until the mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining.  Rest mixture for 3 minutes, then whisk for another 30 seconds.  Repeat process of resting and whisking 2 more times until mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny.  

5. Using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture until just combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.

Bottom Row: flattened disks of dough
Middle Row: Candy placed on disks
Top Row: Dough wrapped around candy

6. Using a cookie dough scooper (which is a smaller version of an ice cream scooper), scoop about two tablespoons worth of dough into a ball.  Next, flatten ball into a circle.  Place one Reese's square or 2 slices of snickers in the center of the disc, and wrap the dough around the candy.  Be sure to seal the dough completely or candy may leak out while baking.
7. Sprinkle chopped Reese or Snickers on top of the cookie to be able to tell them apart and for added flavor. (we found adding finely chopped snicker pieces to the top of the warm cookies right after they come out of the oven made for a more attractive topping. Baking the cookies with the toppings already on caused them to melt and no longer be recognizable as Snickers.
8. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper, unless you are using a non-stick cookie sheet.  Bake for 10-12 until golden brown (edges will be darker than the center which should still be soft).
9. Cool on a wire cooling rack.

So that's it!  All together, this whole process took us about 3 hours, including shopping.  Since we already had a lot of the ingredients, it really didn't cost us that much, either!  Everyone seemed to like the cookies...except for Megan!  She always uses the same chocolate chip cookie recipe, so browning the butter was a new taste.  It adds a unique nutty flavor to the dough.  Dana loved it, but if you like more of a traditional chocolate chip cookie, Megan would recommend the good old Nestle recipe on the back of the semi-sweet chocolate chip bag!  Maybe next time we make these wrap-ups, we will try it with the Nestle recipe, and maybe with different chocolate candies!

We hope you enjoy this recipe and have fun making it your own like we did!

Click here to see the original recipe!