So....for any of you guys out there who think I am an evil nasty mommy who has robbed her kids of an endless gorging of candy on Halloween, I think I have struck a balance with the kiddos.
Thing 2 had no idea what was going on with Halloween. He just liked dressing up and staying out late. He loved eating the candy, but had no idea why people were giving it to him and when the night was finished he had no concept of how much loot he had gotten. Thing 1 understands the concept now. So you can't just take the candy away from him. I agree, taking away somthing precious from your child, even if it isn't good for them, is a good way to break trust with your kid. If you want to wrestle the candy out of their tightly closed sweaty palms, you have to win them over with rational thought, or style, or both.
Last weekend I took all the chocolate bars from their big bag of candy and make Halloween Candy Cookies. My thinking was that in cookie form the kids could see that candy had some uses other than just fast joyless consumption. Also, I figured that with some whole grains and pastured butter, all that sugar would be in better company. Plus, some fat and fiber would slow the absorption of the sugar down, making for less crazy children. I don't know about you, but my kids are crazy after having candy, they fight and crab, you name it.
I made just the Toll House cookie recipe which I think is just the bees' knees. Of course, I made some changes, I used Organic Valley's Pastured Butter. I also used 100% whole wheat flour instead of white and I used rapadura instead of the white sugar. Since it has been a week, I can't remember, but I think I used one cup of rapadura instead of the one and a half cups of white sugar that the original recipe calls for. If you are having trouble finding rapadura, it is sold by a company called Rapunzel under a slightly different name. You can find it at Whole Foods, but Tropical Traditions does sell it. I have identified it as a product I love. You can find a like to Tropical Traditions in my side bar. And of course I used chopped up candy bars instead of chocolate chips. The changes made for a slightly less sweet cookie. But now that we are accustomed to eating 100% whole wheat flour, I had no issues with that.
I made the cookies while Thing 2 and DH were passed out for an afternoon nap. Thing 1 helped. I gave him a dinner knife and let him cut up some of the candy. I also let him mix the butter and shape some of the balls. We had a good time together. And having him help was crucial to this. He got to sample some of the candy before it went in the batter. He got to see what I was doing with all the candy. And at the end, he got cookies warm from the oven. Not a half bad deal. And by the way, the cookies with the Butterfinger pieces were so good that I am considering an entire Butterfinger batch at some point.
So you see, I wasn't just planning on rudely snatching my kids Halloween candy away from them. I wanted them to be a part of the life cycle of that candy. Thing 1 hasn't asked for any candy since we made the cookies. And there still was more left, just all the non-chocolate pieces. He was really into eating the cookies themselves. The holiday is officially over and I have to give my kids credit. They indulged the night of Halloween and for the week or so after they had one or two pieces a night. They didn't fall on the ground and tantrum for more. They earned their candy by eating good healthy balanced dinners. Maybe they are learning to put sugar in perspective after all? Still, next year I imagine I will forget this moment of sanity and give a few stern lectures over the evils of sugar. We are not perfect, after all.
Enjoy!
The sugary dust swirled around her food processor, making the Queen excited and hopeful about success. But when she opened the lid to the processor, she found nothing but a cloud of dust and a cup of largely unchanged sucanat sugar. The Queen and the Prince tasted the sugar. It was kind of chewy, not crunchy like it had looked. Perhaps if peanut butter was added, then the sugar and the peanut butter would form a paste? She thought she’d give it a try.
The food processor yielded a paste, not even remotely thick. More like thick peanut butter than fudge. She and the Prince tasted. It tasted good. But ugh. It was very very grainy because of the sucanat. Perhaps a half a cup of regular organic sugar would do the trick. Nope. The paste became slightly thicker, but not like a candy, still spreadable.
To the sweet paste the Queen added ¾ cup of whole wheat flour and two eggs. Only when she added the second egg, most of the white slipped out and landed on the counter top. Drats! When she attempted to clean up the egg white, PLOP, it landed on the floor. Now have you ever tried to clean up egg white off of a floor? Well, the Queen had not and the process was so frustrating that she began looking for hidden cameras which were undoubtedly capturing her every move for the amusement of others.
When the floor had been cleaned, the Queen added in 2 tablespoons of butter (because it seemed like the thing to do) and ran the food processor and the dough came together. It finally looked like dough. He checked the tagine. It was warming up, nothing hot yet, but it was getting there. She began to make small tablespoon sized balls and then flattening them into cookies. 
She placed several into the heated tagine. Only, about 10 minutes later, the cookies hadn’t done much. She decided that the double boiler idea wasn’t working too well. She placed the tagine directly on the flame and let it get hot. Unfortunately the Queen had been storing some dried rose petals in the tagine for the last several months and as it heated up, the thing stunk like dried roses.
This flame was too hot. So she pitched this batch and washed out the tagine to remove most of the burned bits. She tried the tagine again on low. This time she watched the cookies more closely. After a little while she flipped the cookies. They were slightly burned, but still good.
She placed in a few cookies and started frying them. This kind of worked! They browned. And if she kept the heat low the cookies could continue to cook and maybe look normal. She tasted one. The sugar still tasted pretty granular, and the whole thing was really went like a spoonful of peanut butter, rather than bready like a cookie. Oh well, not her finest kitchen moment, but edible nonetheless. 
She finished up the batch and set the cookies into the fridge to harden up as all the peanut oil, butter and now coconut oil had gotten very soft through the cooking process.
There are a couple of morals to this story. First off, Kings if you are just dying to spoil your princes and princesses with candy, can you do it less often, or choose items that don’t involve food dyes, like regular non candy-coated chocolate? Secondly, sucanat and rapadura are not the same thing as I might have alluded to on this site previously. They are very similar but sucanat seems more wet and chewy whereas rapadura or Rapunzel sugar is crunchy. Still, I look forward to experimenting with sucanat, as now I have a 2 pound bag of it in my cabinet. Thirdly, sugar burns. It actually burns a lot faster than say, onions and garlic. Not having pan fried that many cookies, the Queen wasn’t aware of this miracle. It took her a little off guard. Also, your family will still eat even marginal desserts because they contain delicious sugar, so don’t sweat a poor outcome. Your creation will not go to waste. 