Using Up Holiday Candy

I am known far and wide by my sisters to have the best stash of candy on my kitchen counter.

Now, I rarely EAT that candy...I just like having the option to go out and grab a handful of M&Ms if I want them.

This time of year the candy is especially abundant with the after Christmas sales on Hershey Kisses, Reeses Cups and, of course, M&Ms. It's almost as bad as my wax paper/aluminum foil stash.

I had good luck with the Rolo cookies I found on Pinterest from Six Sisters' Stuff blog so I decided to try another one of their cake mix cookie recipes.

I had a handful of Andes mints and a box of Devils Food cake mix so I went with their Andes Mint Cookies. They turned out very yummy!

The recipe is super simple, just 4 ingredients.

1 box of Devils Food cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
Andes mints

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix the first three ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. The batter will be thick. Roll dough into 1-1.5 inch balls (or whatever size you want them to be) and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 6-9 minutes (mine took 9 minutes but mine may have been a bit big). Pull out of oven and immediately place unwrapped Andes mint on top of each. I didn't have enough mints so I broke them in half. Let them sit for about 5 minutes (I put mine in the warm oven with the heat off and door open for a couple of minutes) so the mint melts. Swirl the mint around the top of the cookie with the back of a spoon.

Since I didn't have enough mints for another pan of cookies and had enough dough left for at least a dozen more cookies, I improvised.

I wrapped the cookie dough around a miniature Reese's Cup (about the same amount of dough as I used for the Andes cookies) and placed them in a greased miniature cupcake pan.I baked them for 9 minutes (might leave them in for another minute if I make them again). I had enough to make 12 of these.

And just because I could, I melted some leftover Godiva Gems chocolate on the top of about half of these cookies...just made them that much better!

Do you do anything creative with your leftover Christmas candy?

I still have two bags of Hershey Kisses on my counter...