Idaho’s Favorite Christmas Candy is Best in Handfuls

While other states are picking crazy things like Pez and Starbursts as favorite Christmas candies, Idaho is making much wiser choices.  These perfect little discs are  red and green, they melt in your mouth, and they're great in my Mama's cookies!  I'll share the recipe just in case you're in the baking mood this weekend.

Candystore.com has come up with a map of the favorite Christmas candies by state, and Idaho picks M&Ms. Right on, sistahs.  Some of us might stash these little gems in desk drawers at work and suck on them all day long.  There's an art to eating them too, right?  Like suck on four or five at a time and warm them up until the inside is melted, and then crunch down on the outer shells and let the chocolate ooze out.  Love.  Who needs a man.

On the Favorite Christmas Candy List, there's nothing wrong with the non-chocolate choices from our neighbors in Montana and in states like Texas and Utah, but some of us are really happy we're in a state like Idaho gets the important things in life right.

We've got an M&M tradition in my family.  Every year on Christmas Eve, the doorbell rings while we're making soup, and the kids run to the door to discover that Santa has left some of those plastic candy canes filled with M&Ms on our doorstep.  It happened when I was a kid, and it still happens now.  When I was a kid, my grandpa always seemed to disappear around the time the doorbell was ringing, and now I usually miss the moment the kids open the door because I'm "taking out the trash."  But other than that, no one knows how Santa pulls this off year after year.

My mom has made M&M cookies every year at Christmas for as long as I can remember, and I'll share the recipe in case you feel like baking this weekend.  You can suck on these cookies too until the M&Ms melt.  Yum!

M&M Cookies

1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 and 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 and 1/2 cups of M&Ms

Cream the sugars, shortening, eggs, and vanilla.  Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt together first, then blend the flour mixture with the creamed mixture.  Stir in half of the M&Ms and mix well (you're saving half for decoration).  Drop the dough by rounded teaspoons onto an ungreased baking sheet, and top each cookie with a few of the remaining M&Ms.  Then bake at 375 for 10 to 12 minutes.  (That's Mom's recipe to only use a cup and a half of M&Ms.  Jen would totally dump the whole bag into the dough and skip the fancy decorating part.  But it's up to you.)

Dunk 'em in milk and leave some for Santa.  It's Idaho's signature candy after all.