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puts a board over the bag and bangs on the board with a hammer. Any way you want to crush the candy is fine— just be really careful with hammers and mallets if you have ceramic tile counters. You can also break the candy canes in pieces with your hands and then pulverize them in a food processor with the steel blade. (Read your instruction manual to make sure the food processor you have will handle a task like this.)
I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but last summer when Andrea, Michelle, and I were staying out at Mother’s lake cottage, we couldn’t find a hammer, so I put the candy canes in a triple layer of plastic bags and Michelle backed over them several times with the car. (It worked.) Measure out a quarter cup of finely crushed candy canes and place them in a small bowl. Add a quarter cup white granulated sugar and mix it all up with a fork. (The goal is to get an equal amount of sugar and crushed candy cane on each of the dough balls that you’ll make.) Roll the dough into one-inch diameter balls with your hands. This dough may be sticky, so roll only enough for the cookies you plan to bake immediately and then put the bowl in the refrigerator.
Roll the dough balls in the bowl of topping and place them on the greased cookie sheets, 12 balls to a standard sheet. Flatten them slightly with a metal spatula or the heel of your impeccably clean hand.
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Bake the cookies at 350 degrees F. for 8 to 10 minutes.
Cool them on the cookie sheet for a minute and then remove the cookies to a wire rack to complete cooling. (If you leave them on the cookie sheet for more than a minute, they may stick. It’s not the sugar—it’s the crushed candy canes. They melt and then stick to your baking sheets.)
Yield: approximately 8 dozen yummy cookies ! % { # 9
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