Halloween

10 Treats to Make with Leftover Halloween Candy

November 2, 2017

Halloween may be over, but I would guess you still have lots of candy left over at your house. The problem becomes, what do you do with all that leftover candy?! Except eat it, of course!

When I was a kid, my parents would ration my candy and let me have a few pieces here or there. Funny thing, though, somehow the candy stash didn’t last as long as I thought it would. I wonder where all that candy ended up, mom?

Now as an adult, I try to find ways to get rid of the candy as fast as possible because I know if it’s left around long enough, I will just eat it. For the past couple Halloweens I have tried to find ways to make other treats using the leftover Halloween candy. One year I made a Halloween candy bark, which was as easy as melting chocolate and tossing chopped up candy on top. Another year I mixed them into some cookie dough.

Surprisingly, there are lots of things you can do with leftover Halloween candy other than eating it. I found 10 that look really delicious and quite easy in case you are like me and trying to get rid of all your candy.

1. Loaded Brownies (above) by yours truly.

2. Loaded Peanut Butter Cookie Bars by Pass the Cookies

3. Candy Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars by Joy, Food, Sunshine

4. Candy Bar Trifle by Lil Luna

5. Candy Corn Soft Batch Cookies by Averie Cooks

6. No Churn Snickers Cheesecake Ice Cream by Cook with Manali

7. Halloween Candy Cookie Cake by Baker by Nature

8. Butterfinger Pie by Life in the Lofthouse

9. Reece’s Marshmallow Peanut Butter Chip Cookies by Oh Sweet Basil

10. Trick or Treat Pretzels by 30 Handmade Days And if you still have leftover candy, just send a little bit my way! Please and thank you.

Halloween Silhouette Cookies

October 31, 2017

Happy Halloween everyone! As an adult, I don’t get to really enjoy Halloween as much. There is really no dressing up (for me anyway). Eating lots of Halloween candy also comes with lots of Halloween guilt. And for us, we live in an area that doesn’t get any trick-or-treaters, so I can’t even live vicariously through the kids.

But that doesn’t stop me from making lots of Halloween treats! In the past, I have made these Halloween macarons. This year I made these Halloween skulls and now these Halloween Silhouette cookies which were actually inspired by painted rocks.

I really loved making these cookies because they were surprisingly easy! It also helped that I was already making red, orange, and yellow icing for my Houston Astros cookies. But if you have kids, these would be a great baking project to do with them. Once the icing is dry, you can give them a black edible food marker and let them draw whatever they want on top.

Here’s what I did:

First I piped three sections of red, orange, and yellow icing from top to bottom. Then I used my scribe tool (or toothpick) to just fill in some of the empty space. After that, I took a pallet knife (a butter knife will also work) so spread the layers of icing together. This will form a semi ombre effect and also look like a bright sky at sunset.

For some of the other cookies, I added a little dark blue at the top to really make it look like a night sky.

After the cookies dry for a couple hours, you can draw and paint right on top.

I took my inspiration from a quick Pinterest search of Halloween silhouettes to find this spooky house and the rest of the images that I used.

For the larger images, like this house, I used black gel food coloring, slightly diluted with almond extract, to paint the house. For smaller images, like the spider web, I just used my marker.

I absolutely love these and will be making them again next Halloween for sure! There are so many fun images that you can draw on top, the options are endless. I found myself thinking of more ideas after I had run out of cookies.

As usual, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe. You could also make chocolate cookies, which would really amp up the colors of the sky. Or you could do pumpkin spice!

Below are the tools that I used for these cookies.

[show_shopthepost_widget id=”2875246″]

Peanut Butter Chocolate Popcorn

October 31, 2016

Do you need a last minute treat to make for Halloween? I’ve got you covered!

This peanut butter chocolate popcorn mix was something I mixed up at the last minute for a pumpkin carving party last night. I has just spend the weekend baking cookies for a baby shower and my cookie decorating class, so the last thing I wanted to do was bake something. Since one of my favorite holiday treats involves popcorn and melted chocolate, I figured I could adapt that to make it more suitable for Halloween.

I started by popping 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels over the stove (which will make approx. 6 cups of popcorn). You could always pop the popcorn with an air popper, or use the microwave popcorn, but I think stove-popped popcorn tasted a little bit better.

To pop the popcorn on the stove, I start by putting the oil and a couple kernels in the bottom of a stock pot and place it over medium heat. Once the kernels have popped, I know the oil had heated up enough to pop the rest of the kernels. I add the rest of them in, put the top on the pot, give it a good shake, and let them pop away. When I don’t hear any more popping, I remove the pot from the heat.

For the toppings, I used white chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, and peanut butter chips. I wanted it to look white, orange, and black, so I added a bit of orange food coloring to the peanut butter to brighten it up a bit. I also ended up mixing in some white chocolate because it was looking a little too dark.

Once all the popcorn was coated in chocolate or peanut butter, I dumped it all out on a sheet of parchment to harden. I also too the opportunity, while the chocolate was still wet, to add in some sprinkles and candies. I used orange and black sprinkles, candy corns, and M&Ms. Reese’s piece would have also have been good in this (But, I didn’t want to buy the giant bag of them, knowing I would only use a handful. I would just send up eating the rest…probably in one sitting. I certainly didn’t need that.)

After the chocolate was hardened, I tossed all the popcorn together. That way each bit contains a bit of chocolate and peanut butter!

The popcorn mix came out just as I had hoped. It was perfectly festive, and most importantly, very tasty! It made a great little treat to snack on while we carved pumpkins. If you want to make this in the last remaining hours of Halloween, you could serve it in a bowl or in little treat bags, which would be very cute.

If you happen to read this after Halloween, you can still make this recipe! Just skip the food coloring in the peanut butter chips and swap out the Halloween-themed candy! Peanut butter chocolate popcorn is good all year long!

PIN NOW, MAKE LATER

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:90]

Halloween Macarons

October 17, 2016

I was hoping to have this post up last week, but my computer decided to stick a wrench in those plans. I turned my computer on on Tuesday morning and had a very ominous warning that my computer’s fan was not working. Like any good computer owner, I decided to go to work and not worry about it, hoping that it would just heal itself. Computers can do that, right?

Sadly, I came home and the fan was still not working. I was able to start my computer anyways, but ran the risk of my processor overheating. The last thing I did before I completely ruined my computer was to upload the video of me making the macarons to YouTube. Between that video and the photos I somehow decided not to delete off of my memory card, I actually have a post for you today!

And this one I am really excited about! I have been wanting to do something fun with macarons for the holidays, so why not start with Halloween?! These Halloween Macarons were actually really easy to make, maybe easier than decorating cookies because they are so much smaller.

I started by making my favorite Laduree Macaron recipe. When the batter was just about mixed together, I split it into 3 bowls, dyed one orange, one black, and one white. Yes, I actually dyed the batter white even though it’s pretty white already. The white food coloring really helped brighten and lighten up the batter, making it perfect for my mummies!

After the macarons were baked and cooled, I got to work decorating! The orange macarons turned into Jack-O-Lanterns. The black macarons turned into spider webs. And you know what happened to the white ones.

I could explain all that in a post….but wouldn’t it be better to watch me do that? Yeah…I thought so.

Here is the recipe for the macarons: Laduree Macaron Recipe & Video

I made the full recipe (normally I just make a third for 12 macarons), and then split the batter to make 3 different colors, or about 12 of each.

Here is the recipe for the royal icing: The Best Royal Icing for Decorating Cookies

Because the macarons are smaller than your average cookie, I had a lot of icing left over. You could probably halve this recipe and still have enough. Here is how I divided the icing:

Approx. 1/3 of icing in black flood consistency icing (web background, mummies eyes, and background of jack-o-lantern)
Approx. 1/3 of icing in orange flood consistency icing (jack-o-lantern)
Approx. 1/4 of icing in white flood consistency icing (mummy, spider web)
Remaining in black piping consistency icing (spider)

You could fill the macarons with just about whatever you want, I chose to fill it with dark chocolate ganache. You can find the recipe I used here. But, nutella, buttercream, or a jam would also work well.

Let me know if you try out these Halloween macarons, or even if you attempt the designs on a normal cookie! I would love to see your creations!

PIN NOW, MAKE LATER

Candy Corn Rice Krispie Treats

October 26, 2015

Who is ready for Halloween? I sure am! Any excuse to eat lots and lots of candy, like candy corn! I know its not everyone’s favorite, but I don’t discriminate against anything with sugar in it. But even if you don’t like candy corn, you will still love these Rice Krispie treats because they only LOOK like candy corn. They don’t taste like them.

I wanted to make something fun yet simple for a Halloween party this weekend. I stroll through the candy aisle inspired this candy shaped version of the classic Rice Krispie treat. To make these tri-colored only required a little bit more effort. I started with the standard recipe you can find on the back of any Rice Krispie box. I then divided up the mixture into 3 equal portions and dyed 2 of the portions: 1 orange, 1 yellow.

I started with the un-dyed portion and formed into into a long log and placed in down the center of a baking dish. I then took the orange portion and spit it half, then spread it out on either side of the white portion. Then repeated that step with the yellow. Once I was happy with the proportions, I pressed everything together into one big section.

After letting the Rice Krispie Treats cool for about 30 minutes, I cut them down the center, lengthwise. Then cut on a diagonal everything 3 inches. I measured out 3 inch sections from end to end on either side. I then cut from the corner of one side to the 3 inch mark on the other, then kept cutting until I got 16 triangles.

Candy Corn Rice Krispie Treats-3

Hopefully that made sense. It took me a few attempts to figure out the best cutting method. I started trying to mark out the cuts with bakers twine. Then was going to attempt free hand. Ultimately I decided to use the candy corn to help me mark out exact measurements.

One tip for making sharp cuts on your Rice Krispie treats is to spray your knife with a little oil or baking spray. It will ensure that none of the sticky marshmallow gets stuck and starts pulling apart all your hard work!

I hope you try this spirited version of Rice Krispie treats this Halloween or for any party you may have coming up in the next couple weeks. Candy corn is appropriate during all Fall.

[yumprint-recipe id=’71’]

Last Minute Halloween Costume Ideas

October 19, 2015

I have officially reached that age (5 years ago) where I no longer want to be nor can I get away with anything “slutty” for Halloween. I also don’t really want to spend $50+ on a poorly made costume I will wear once. Now I would much rather pull some things out of my closet and throw together a Halloween costume with what I already have. Or at the very least, if I do buy something, it can be something that I will wear again the rest of the year.

So in that vain, I have rounded up a few costume ideas that can be made with pieces that a lot of us probably already have in our closet. Not only will these costumes not cost much (if any) money, but if you are in a pinch and need a costume at the last minute, you won’t have to run out to the store to find something!

[show_ms_widget id=”26591214″ image_id=”28629456″ width=”785″ height=”921″]

You could really be any of T. Swift’s characters from the Shake It Off video, but her main outfit could be so easily replicated. Black cropped pants, turtleneck, and flats, plus some side swept bangs and her signature red lips and you could easily pass as Miss Swift. I would definitely sport a blinged out microphone and don’t be afraid to bust out some of her signature moves!

[show_ms_widget id=”26591224″ image_id=”28629466″ width=”781″ height=”922″]

A scarecrow costume is little more than any outfit you might wear to the grocery store on the weekend. Just add some pieces of straw and maybe a little face paint to your ensemble of relaxed fit jeans, a flannel shirt, booties, and a floppy hap. If you want, you could add a post to your back and down your arms so you can really be outstanding in your field (scarecrow joke)!

[show_ms_widget id=”26591236″ image_id=”28629480″ width=”859″ height=”906″]

Mary Poppins is the best costume for work! Start with your normal work wardrobe: black skirt, heels, and white button down. Then throw on a black hat, button your shirt all the way up and tie a red ribbon under your collar. Don’t forget to grab an umbrella on your way out the door and carry your biggest bag possible.

[show_ms_widget id=”26591242″ image_id=”28629484″ width=”787″ height=”922″]

This farmer costume might be my favorite because I have been itching for an excuse to get a pair of overalls! Pair overalls (or any light wash jeans) with a plaid or chambray shirt and throw on a straw hat and you’ve got yourself a costume!

[show_ms_widget id=”26591250″ image_id=”28629490″ width=”794″ height=”921″]

If this post proves anything, it is that you can turn any of your plaid, flannel, or buffalo check shirts into a cute costume. The lumberjack costume is really easy to put together if you have a red/black buffalo shirt, dark jeans, and a beanie. Pick up a fake axe from the costume store and maybe paint on a beard and you will be the cutest lumberjack around.

Have you ever created a Halloween costume using just what you had on hand? What did you go as? I have a few more costume ideas in mind, so I may be posting another round up of costume ideas sometime between now and Halloween.

Worms and Dirt Brownie Cups

October 30, 2014

One of my favorite things to make for Halloween parties is worms and dirt. I have made it in various forms: as a cupcake, a pudding cup, a cake. And this time around, as a brownie. It’s just so easy and really gets me into the Halloween spirit!

I decided to make these for a bake sale we had a work this week (to support diabetes of all things!). I wanted it to be easy to eat and package, which is why I decided on a brownie in a cup. The cup helps hold in the “worms” and the “dirt”, which really are the key features of this dessert.

And just to be clear…these are SUPER easy. Sometimes I like to attempt complicated things, but these are not one of them. Literally they are a boxed brownie mix baked in a cupcake tin, topped with butter cream, cookie crumbs, and gummy worms. Boom. You’re done.

Of course you can make all of the elements from scratch, but I don’t really feel the need. I don’t think people are going to notice if you made the brownie from scratch when they are digging in to their little worms and dirt cups.

And it doesn’t have to be just worms. You could use gummy spiders or other insect or reptile shaped candy. Even little tombstones made from cookies or white chocolate would be a great touch. And if you don’t want to make these in cups, you can certainly make a pan of brownies and top with the frosting and cookies. There are no limits!

Hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween!!

[yumprint-recipe id=’54’]