How much candy do you typically purchase for trick-or-treaters? Do you get a lot of children paying you a visit on Halloween? We live in a condo and we only get a handfull of trick-or-treaters compared to people who live in houses. That is one of the reasons why I can’t wait to have a house. I love it when kids come knocking on our door on Halloween. I love to see their costumes, especially the little ones.
When you buy Halloween candy, do you look for things YOU would like, or what you think the kids might like? Every year I say to myself that I’ll buy candy that I don’t like so that I can prevent myself from eating most of it before the holiday. My husband and kids are just as quilty as I am. It’s hard to resist when you have handfulls of your favorite candies available to you.
I especially love to pick up variety bags. It’s nice to have an assortment of your favorites…I mean the trick-or-treaters favorites (:-)) so that they have candies they are going to enjoy. There is nothing worst then getting weird, generic no-name candies in your trick or treat bag. When I was a little girl my mom would toss out all the candies that were not brand names. As a parent myself I tend to do the same thing. I rather stick to brands that I know and love, such as Nestle, then take chances with weird candies that are most likely imported from far away.
Nestle has a lot of great combination bags that are filled with my personal favorites like Oh Henry, Raisinettes and Goobers. My husband loves 1000 Grand bars and Nestle Crunch bars. My kids… they are not picky…they love it all!
This Halloween Nestle’s brand Wonka has available bags of Sweetarts shaped like skulls and bones. They are not individually wrapped. My kids and my hubby love Sweetarts so I wanted to make a special treat for them that utilized the bag of skulls and bones that I had.
Baking is not my forte, but I thought it would be fun to bake up some cupcakes and decorate them with the Sweetart skulls and bones. It’s such an easy treat to make and it was such a huge hit with my family.
To make simply bake your favorite cupcake, top with frosting and then decorate with Sweetart skulls and bones. You can’t get any easier than that. You could even “cheat” and buy pre-made cupcakes and decorate them with the skulls and bones.
These would make a great treat for classroom Halloween parties or even parties in your own home.
They were so good! The super tart and sour Sweetarts really went well with the sweet frosting and cupcake. My kids gobbled them up.
I have another super easy Halloween treat (or any time treat) you might want to try making too – caramel candy apples!
You can make these one of two ways. You can either make the caramel to dip the apples in yourself or you can buy pre-made caramel apples and then just put them in the microwave for a few seconds to melt the caramel enough that you can roll them in candy so that it would stick.
I chose to make my own caramel dip. I simply put one package of individually wrapped caramels into a microwave save dish and added two tables spoons of water. Then I microwaved it for a few seconds at a time (stopping to stir every so often) until the caramels were soft and creamy.
For the apples I picked up some Granny Smith apples (I love the tart flavor). I washed them then stuck sticks into the core to make it easy to dip and eat. I had some sticks on hand. You can also use Popsicle sticks too.
For the topping I took some of my family’s favorite Nestle candies. My husband loves Nestle Crunch, I love Butterfingers and my kids love Nerds.
I took several individual pieces of Nestle Crunch (unwrapped) into a seal sandwich bag and mashed them up with the back of a soup spoon. Then I poured the candy into a bowl. I did the same thing with the Butterfingers. Nerds are already small so I just poured a few of the boxes into a bowl.
For each apple I dunk it into the caramel, then rolled it around in the topping of my choice. Next I let them firm up on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.
Check out my creations!
The great thing about making these caramel apples (aside from how incredibly yummy they were!) is that they were so quick and easy to make. Not only that you can make them year round because Nestle candies are available on a store shelf near you.
I also think these apples would make a great gift. Simply wrap each individual apple in celophane and top with a fancy curling ribbon. Why spend $$$ on gourmet apples when you can make them quickly, easily and inexpensively at home.
Speaking of candy, check out Nestle’s HUGE pumpkin shaped candies. We have them in both Butterfinger and Nestle Crunch varieties. These are perfect for Halloween (I love the sweet little pumpkin design).
These are a great size to toss into a school lunch for a sweet surprise. Even your not-so-little kid (aka – Hubby!) would enjoy one of these tucked inside his lunch too.
Check out these other fun Halloween recipes – Boo-ti-ful Ghosts and Graveyard Cake.
For more great Halloween recipes visit www.Meals.com/Recipes/Holiday-Recipes/Halloween-Recipes.
You can check out more great ideas on Nestle’s Facebook page. You can also follow Nestle on Twitter.
Do you have a favorite Halloween recipe that uses candy as one of the main ingredients? If so I would love to hear more about it. Please feel free to share your recipe in the comments section of this post.
Kimberly
*I received free product samples in order to do this review/recipe post. There was no compensation. The opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced in any way.
karen says
What a great idea for caramel apples! I can’t eait to try it with Butterfingers.
Rachel@YellowTennessee says
Oh, I love the idea of dipping caramel apples in your favorite candy. Looks amazing.
We don’t buy a bunch of candy as we never have any trick or treaters. I just make the kids share their haul with me.
Alison says
I love nerds! Your covered apples look delicious! Yum yum yum!
Sheri says
We get hundreds of kids because we live in a newer family subdivision and the country kids come in to our neighbourhood too. I buy stuff that I like, and what is on sale. I love your candy apples!