Spooky Sweets

Put just a little bit of trick into your treats this Halloween. If you’re hosting a Halloween party or volunteered to bring a dessert to an event, you’ll want to find something sweet with just a hint of spookiness. These desserts are festive for fall, and sure to please all of the guys and ghouls at parties this October.

For a festive fall cake that will work equally well for Halloween and Thanksgiving, make a pumpkin! You’ll need a bundt pan, some pumpkin spice cake mix or recipe (and all of the extras required to make the mix), and some orange icing. Just make two cakes in the bundt pan, flip one cake over, put icing on the flat part and stack the second cake on top. Look, it’s a pumpkin now! You can choose to frost the whole thing or you can leave it unfrosted (the pumpkin spice cake should already have a slightly orange tint to it). If you’re really into cake decorating, fashion a stem out of fondant and use a darker shade of frosting to color the indents.

(If you’re like me, it’s enough that the cake looks kind of like a pumpkin, so you can leave it at that.)

Cute little witch’s hat cookies are much easier than they look. Start with fudge shortbread cookies, like Keebler Fudge Stripes, and attach an unwrapped Hershey Kiss to the chocolate side of each cookie using icing. If you’re really into this project, use red or orange decorative icing to make a little bow where the Kiss meets the cookie; otherwise, just use chocolate icing to fix the two together without being seen.

How about some tiny little bones? Melt a half a package of meltable white chocolate wafers according to the instructions on the package. Push a mini marshmallow onto each end of pretzel stick, then dip the entire thing into the white chocolate. Remove from the chocolate with a spoon, then allow it to cool and set on wax paper.

To gross out your guests, serve used bandages. By that, I mean use a graham cracker with a square of vanilla frosting in the centre to stand in for a bandage. Use a little bit of red decorating gel, or any red jelly, to leave a little blood patch in the center of the vanilla frosting.

Put a Halloween twist on chocolate-covered strawberries and turn them into ghosts. Melt white chocolate wafers according to instructions on the package, then dip strawberries into it. Immediately push two mini milk chocolate chips into the white chocolate for eyes, then place the berry on wax paper and put it into the freezer for five minutes. Melt a few mini chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl. Dip a toothpick into the melted chocolate and use it to draw a little mouth on your ghost.

These cute little Halloween desserts should wow every ghost and goblin you come across this spooky season! Bone appétit!