Last-Minute Halloween Treats

Halloween is tomorrow! This has always been one of my absolute, most favorite holidays ever (right after Christmas and Thanksgiving). I've loved everything about Halloween since I was little, whether it was figuring out what my costume was going to be, to packing trick or treat bags for the neighbors, and of course, the actual trick or treating. I'll never forget the year when I managed to get over ten pounds of candy (all by myself, for myself) in just under two hours. If that's not marathon trick or treating, I don't know what is.  It was the result of having an epic costume, trick or treating at the most opportune moment, and having my mom follow just a few feet behind me (I would dump out my candy into a bag she was carrying whenever my pumpkin started to overflow). So really, it was careful planning that made Halloween so perfect each and every year. 

While I love the idea of planning something elaborate and creepy (or cute!) to celebrate this spooky holiday, I'm fully aware that life gets in the way and it just doesn't always happen. Take this year, for instance. I wanted to make an amazing Halloween-themed layer cake, but when I went to make it, nothing seemed to work out. I had an off day, and nothing seemed to be going right. So, since that idea has been archived to share next year, here are a few easy, last-minute Halloween-themed treats that you can make in advance tonight or before your party tomorrow. Whether it's because life got in the way or you procrastinated, these quick ideas are just what you need. 

Creepy Cobweb Chocolate Cake

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, right behind Christmas and Thanksgiving, which are both tied for first right now.  I love spooky and creepy things, and getting dressed up as a little kid was always just about the coolest thing ever.  I was always a fan of dressing up, and that's something that hasn't changed.  My mom would always make me an elaborate homemade costume, and I always thought my costume was the best there was. Combined with my epic costumes, the fact that I also lived in a neighborhood where people were super generous when it came to giving out trick or treat goodie bags meant that Halloween was always a really special time of year.  I'm not dressing up this year, mostly because I just didn't have time to pull together a costume that met my standards, but I'm not without Halloween plans.  I'll be watching scary movies in the dark and eating my weight in mini chocolate bars, which is just as good a plan as any.  

I got into one of my layer-cake-making moods a couple of weeks ago, and rather than just bake a layer cake and get it out of my system, I decided to save it for Halloween. In theory, this meant that I would have had a long time to plan out my cake and decide how I wanted to decorate it, "in theory" being the key words there.  I did spend a lot of time looking for inspiration, but I just couldn't settle on anything.  I knew that I wanted to make a chocolate cake, because I don't think there's anything better than a perfectly moist chocolate cake, and also because the last two layer cakes I had made were of the buttermilk vanilla type (see here and here). Super dark, intense, almost black chocolate layer cakes were going to make it into my final halloween cake in one way or another. The decoration required a bit more thinking, and in the end, I ended up over-thinking it (because that always happens).

Chocolate Bat Sandwich Cookies

Halloween is here, hooray!  I know I'm posting these cute Halloween-inspired cookies terribly late, but hopefully you've made enough Chocolate and Pretzel Rice Krispies and Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups that you'll have faith in me and give these cookies a shot, despite my tardiness.  Trust me!  These sandwich cookies are worth it.  They're simple, delicious, and have a subtle Halloween twist, and I love them.  

I got the idea for these cookies a while ago, but originally I wanted to be really ambitious and make little pumpkin jack-o-lantern cutouts on the top cookies, but after a few minutes of pondering I realized I didn't own cookie cutters that were small enough to cut out the features of the jack-o-lantern's face.  I certainly was NOT about to individually cut out little triangles with an X-acto knife on 4 dozen or so little cookies to make jack-o-lanterns, because, simply put, I do not have either the time or the patience for that sort of thing.  Jack-o-lanterns were just not happening, as cute as those cookies would have turned out.  I stumbled across some chocolate sandwich cookies with a bat shaped cutout on Martha Stewart's website, and I thought they were not only adorable, but so much simpler than attempting to create a jack-o-lantern face.  

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

Peanut butter cups are one of those candies that almost never, ever, EVER caught my eye when I was little.  I just never liked them, and I didn't understand why mixing something like peanut butter with chocolate was supposed to make the chocolate better.  I didn't grow up eating peanut butter, so that could have been the reason why, but chocolate always seemed to taste better when it was full of crispy wafer cookies, like Kit Kats, or layered with caramel, like Twix bars, or filled with crunchy peanuts, like Snickers.  Kit Kats, Twix, and Snickers...now THOSE were real chocolate candy bars!  Whenever I got Reese's peanut butter cups in my Halloween trick or treat pumpkin, I couldn't help but feel disappointed.  I would always trade my Reese's cups with my sister for other chocolate bars, and would instantly feel better.

Chocolate and Pretzel Rice Krispie Treats

Who doesn't love a good rice cereal treat? I don't think I've ever met anyone that doesn't, or at least, I don't think I have.  I have so many memories of eating Rice Krispie treats from way back in the day when I was in elementary school and my mom would pack a snack size treat in my lunchbox.  Those were definitely one of my favorite snacks, and while I don't eat them anymore, every now and then I get a huge, inexplicable craving for that marshmallowy sweet flavor, and I just have to have one. It's a good thing most vending machines carry Rice Krispie treats, because it means I can easily satisfy my craving no matter when it strikes.   

With Halloween literally just a week away, I thought it would be fun to make a few Halloween-inspired treats that would be fun to make with kids, because who doesn't love homemade treats?  Amazingly, this thought happened to cross my mind at the exact moment I began to feel a Rice Krispie craving start to settle in, so it was obvious that I needed to include homemade Rice Krispies in my bag of homemade Halloween treats. I'd never actually made Rice Krispies before, but the steps really couldn't be any simpler.  If you can melt butter and marshmallows together, stir in some rice cereal, and press the mixture into a square pan, then you can make a batch of Rice Krispie treats without any problems.  

Snickers and Pretzel Milkshake

I hope everyone on the East Coast that's been affected by Sandy is alright!  This isn't my favorite way to start off a blog post, but it must be said.  It definitely seems like Sandy caused a lot more damage than I had anticipated; I hadn't given it much thought, thinking it would only be around the status of Irene last year.  That was clearly not the case though.  I was at Columbia during the entire duration of the storm, so I didn't even notice any of the effects very much.  Being this far uptown, all we noticed were heavy winds and some rain, and we didn't lose power or anything.  I wish I could say that everyone else got off this easy though.  I managed to get off the phone with my sister a little while ago, and she told me that they're not likely to get power back for another week!  Sigh.  Hopefully public transit and power are restored soon!  In any case, I hope everyone is alright from the storm, and that no one suffered from too much damage.  But anyway, let's lighten up the mood. It's practically Halloween, and candy and milkshakes are in order.  

Wait.  Candy + milkshakes?!  Yes.  It's time. 

Trick or treating brings back so many memories from when I was little, as I'm sure it does for most people.  My sister and I were very serious about trick or treating, and we would always try to stay out as long as possible in order to maximize our trick or treating results and get the most amount of candy possible.  Before we moved out to Long Island, we used to live in Queens, and one year, we got together with a close friend of mine, and went trick or treating in our old neighborhood.  Needless to say, that was the BEST trick or treating experience ever. We weren't trying to play cool and go off trick or treating without our moms, as we figured that having more candy >>> looking cool, so we were able to enlist the help of our moms to help carry candy once our bags got too full.  It a matter of about an hour, my sister, my friend, and I got about 11 pounds of candy...each.  It was absolutely ridiculous.  My mom made us weigh the bags of candy once we got home, because we just couldn't believe that we had gotten that much candy in such a short period of time.  It was without a doubt, the best Halloween ever.  I don't remember my costume from that year, but the excess in candy certainly made up for it!

Angelic Angel Food Cupcakes

Halloween is officially NINE days away, and I'm getting more and more pumped for it as the days go by (I'm in my senior year of college, I promise.  Don't judge).  Now that we're getting closer and closer to the big day, I figured it was time for my second Halloween cupcake.  Like I said in my last post, I wanted to create more subtle treats this year, and drew my inspiration from two classic Halloween costumes.  What kind of cupcake could be a better match (or maybe contrast is the right word) for a Devil's food cupcake than a light and fluffy angel food cupcake?  Dressed up with fluffy Swiss meringue frosting and white chocolate angel wings, these cupcakes are perfectly angelic (and delicious!)

Angel food cake is one of those types of cakes that I only recently started eating (and enjoying).  I didn't grow up eating angel food cake, and I only remember eating it maybe twice when I was little, during those typical elementary school lunchbox swaps.  I remember having traded one of my snacks for someone's angel food cake, and I don't remember being that impressed with it.  For some reason, the texture just seemed a bit off to me...I know, it sounds crazy, but it was just too fluffy for me!  In any case though, angel food cake is definitely something I enjoy now, yet I never make it because I just don't own a tube pan (sad, I know).  Angel food cake is a perfect cake for summer, because it's so light, but when paired up with swiss meringue frosting and a pair of white chocolate angel wings, it's a perfect cupcake for Halloween too!

Devilish Devil's Food Cupcakes

It's that time of year again.  It's time to start thinking of costumes (I obviously already did this weeks ago, because I have crazy obsessions, and apparently, nothing better to do with my time), start making some sort of plans for the weekend before (I'm still working on this- Alie, Lydia, and Isabel, if you're reading this, let's get a move on!), and start buying bags and bags and bags of mini fun-sized chocolate candies (I haven't done this yet, but I plan on indulging in this sort of activity very soon).  We're about two weeks away from one of my favorite holidays ever.  Halloween is coming, and it's coming fast!

Last year, I went crazy with Halloween preparation, and made a ton of cupcakes in order to celebrate.  I went with more obvious Halloween themes, like pumpkins, candy corn, mummies, spiderwebs, and of course, these adorable little ghost cupcakes.  As much as I loved all the cupcakes I made last year, I knew that for this year, I wanted to go with a route that was perhaps a little more subtle.  I took a cue from two very popular Halloween costumes, and decided to use them as my jumping off points, both for the cupcake decorations, as well as the cupcake themselves!  For the first, a Devil's food cupcake, decorated with a devilish combination of red vanilla frosting and black fondant horns seemed like a perfectly fitting, yet subtle, tribute to Halloween. 

Easy Halloween Cake Pops

These days, it's hard not to come across cake pops.  I love them! They're small, bite sized (maybe two-bite sized) little treats that are just too adorable to pass up.  They're also completely customizable, and can be made to fit any decorating scheme, holiday, or event.  The fact that they're also really easy to make only makes them even more convenient of a dessert to have up your sleeve.  If you show up anywhere with some really adorable cake pops...you win.

How to Make Candy Corn Cupcakes

This was the last Halloween inspired cupcake my mom and I came up with.  We made ghosts, mummies, spiderwebs, and pumpkins, but something was still missing.  After some careful pondering, we realized that while all the cupcakes looked great on their own, a pop of color and a little brightness was definitely missing.  My mom kept saying, "You need something yellow."  Enter candy corn cupcakes.

How to Make Halloween Pumpkin Cupcakes

So I know that I have already mentioned several times my general disdain for over-exuberant amounts of frosting on cupcakes, but you're just going to have to pretend I have never said any of that before.  Just do it.  I love frosting (for this cupcake at least...and maybe the next Halloween cupcake that's coming up...and maybe these too). Just so we're clear, I don't like eating large quantities of frosting.  I don't know why.  I guess I just think cake is better.  However...decorating with frosting is a whole other story.  The more frosting I have to play with when it comes to frosting cupcakes, the better.  Sometimes you just need a whole lot to get that look you're going for.  There's no rule that says that you actually have to eat all the frosting on a cupcake...yes, I am that guy that will scrape off approximately 80% of the frosting off a cupcake before eating it.  But it's ok.  I like frosting today, remember?

How to Make Spiderweb Cupcakes

My original idea for my Halloween was to make a giant batch of spiderweb cupcakes, but then my mom was just like, "nope, we can do way better than that" and we ended up making 5 different types of cupcakes (two more to come!), and she was totally right.  Why stop with only spiderweb cupcakes when there's so many other great things to make?  Gotta be more creative than that.

I wasn't going to not make my spiderweb cupcakes though...that would have just been silly. I wanted them...so I made them.  They couldn't be any simpler.

How to Make Mummy Cupcakes

When my mom and I finished making the ghost cupcakes, we still had a bunch of white fondant sitting on our kitchen counter.  We wanted to incorporate it somehow into the next cupcake, but we weren't sure what we wanted to actually make.  Then, I dont remember which one of said it, but one of said, "mummies!" And then the other obviously thought it was a good idea, and here they are: adorable, bandaged, mysterious mummy cupcakes!

How to Make Ghost Cupcakes

The first cupcakes I made with my mom for Halloween were these ghost cupcakes.  My mom saw them in a magazine somewhere a couple of weeks ago, and she immediately called me saying that I HAD to make these cupcakes for Halloween.  They sounded like a good idea in my head, and I also pictured that they would look just as adorable in person, but I had no idea I would love them as much as I did when we made them! 

It's a Halloween Party!

It's October 7th today.  That means Halloween is only 24 days away.  That's three and a half weeks.  There's no time to lose, Halloween Party planing needs to start NOW…or soonish I guess.  There's really no reason to put it off because #1, Halloween is quickly approaching, and #2…these Halloween treats are too cute to put off any longer.  Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so I couldn't put this post off any longer.

When I went home last weekend, I had it set in my mind that I would make a batch of really great Halloween-inspired spiderweb cupcakes.  Something cute and simple that anyone could make.  I honestly hadn't really thought of making too many other Halloween things, but I knew that my spiderweb cupcakes would be great.  I enlisted the help of my mother, who is fantastic when it comes to all these sort of decorative/ seasonal type of things, and she wasn't too keen on the spiderweb idea.  At least she wasn't too keen on making only spiderwebs.  That's right.  I was going to make ONLY spiderweb cupcakes? That just wouldn't do.  My mom had so many great ideas, and I really couldn't say no to any of them, they were just too good!