I have always been a bake-it-from scratch kind of girl. Until I had three kids, and then I had to get lax on my from-scratch snobbiness and face reality. With three little whirlwinds in the household, scratch-baking just isn’t gonna happen. I don’t want to cheat my kids of the joy of cookie baking (one of my fondest childhood memories), so I picked up a few Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie mixes to make with them. There are dozens of ways to hack the mix and make just about any kind of cookie imaginable. Of course, I had to combine my love of candy with the mix to see what happened.

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I fancy myself a bit of a pastry connoisseur, so when I received the samples of Cinnamon Bun Bites in the mail, it would not be an exaggeration to say I was overjoyed! Examining the package, my pastry-craving kicked into overdrive. I could smell the freshly-baked aroma of cinnamon bun emanating from the box. How did they do it?! I couldn’t wait to taste the delightful-smelling morsels of cinnamon and sugar. I mean, hey, these are by the same makers of Cookie Dough Bites, after all! How could they not be fantastic?

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Valentine’s Day is inching closer and closer. And people always say the best gifts are ones given from the heart, but nothing says “I love you” better than something from the heart for the stomach.

So in honor of all those lovey-dovey cherubs hovering by, here is my February candy recipe of the month. I call it my Lots-a-Luv Cookies. These babies are sure to wow anyone you present them to because they aren’t the sort of things you would just hand over to anybody.

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My mom is a baker. Not like a real, wakes up at 4am and wears a big white hat baker, but she makes sweet vittles in the oven more often than your average bear. And in fact, cookies are her specialty. But despite her arsenal of specialty biscotti and her 20-plus holiday varietals, she’s never really embraced the classic chocolate chip cookie. I mean, she’s made them and, as such, I had occasion to sample raw cookie dough in my earliest years, but my affection for this delicacy didn’t really blossom until junior high, when my school introduced its Market Day program. (If you don’t know, Google it.)

Yep, Market Day. And more importantly, Market Day frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls. That’s right, only a greased cookie sheet and 14 to 16 minutes separated you from freshly baked chocolate chip cookies – just like Mom’s! (Or better, as the case may be.) And while that certainly revolutionized the after-school snack in my house, my siblings and I quickly discovered that exactly NOTHING separated us from delicious frozen raw cookie dough, any time we could sneak our greasy mitts to the freezer. And thus began the love affair.

So it was with fond memories of sweet, grainy dough and hard chocolate chips melting between my fingers that I ripped into Taste of Nature’s newest incarnation of my childhood treat: Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.

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Beware the Destroyer, a strange and powerful being who unleashes unwanted knowledge at unexpected time, often unaware that his or her simple comment has the power to ruin a perfectly good thing for years and years to come.

You may have come across a Destroyer during your lifetime: they often show up around Christmas, or Easter, or whenever one of your teeth falls out after second grade, if you know what I mean. They like to tell you what does or does not exist. They’re also very good at describing the makeup of hot dogs.

I’ve been a Destroyer before, simply by mentioning that I wasn’t a big fan of the cream cheese frosting that lined the top of the carrot cake my very best friend was eating at the time. Horrified at the concept of cream cheese on cake, my friend promptly spit out his dessert and hasn’t had a piece of carrot cake in over 7 years.

I don’t remember who the Destroyer in my life was, but I do remember what they told me: “Eating raw cookie dough will kill you.”

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