Simple and Fun Halloween Treats

Halloween is nearly upon us and with it comes time to dress up and have a party! These traditions provide so many opportunities for simple and fun Halloween treats to serve all those little ghosts and goblins. We scoured the Internet for spooky treat ideas and decided to try them out ourselves to save you time and trouble. Check out our findings, including photos of our own results, the websites with the original recipes that inspired us (linked below each photo), and a difficulty rating of one to five pumpkins (five being the most difficult). No tricks, just treats!

One tip right off the bat (Halloween pun intended): you will need many, MANY candy eyeballs and, if you’re like us, you might head directly for the Halloween candy section only to wander in frustrated circles trying to find them. The baking aisle is your destination! Be sure to stock up as most of the following recipes include these eyeballs.

Mummy Pretzels

(Inspired by Let’s Dish Recipes)

We loved the way these turned out, so very cute!  Just a few snafus we ran into:

• We burned our first batch of white chocolate, so be sure to stir and stir and STIR when you’re melting your pot of white chocolate.
• Some finesse is required to drizzle the “mummy wraps” around the sticks and have it turn out picture-worthy. The tactic took some figuring out for us, so don’t be discouraged if you have a few practice sticks that turn out not-quite-right.
• You would think the dipping portion is easy, but it’s actually tough to cover the pretzels and not have them turn out too “globby,” so you’ll need to smooth the gooey chocolate out as you go.

DIFFICULTY RATING:

Requires slightly more effort and skill to ensure they turn out picture perfect.

 

Candy Bark

(Inspired by Just a Taste)

As with the white chocolate in the pretzel mummies, you’ll want to remember to keep stirring your bittersweet chocolate morsels while melting to avoid burning. Otherwise, this recipe is a piece of cake (or bark). We recommend using some fall-colored candies like we did for an autumnal bonus.

Keep in mind, you should carefully cut the bark with a sharp knife. If you try to break the bark or the blade is too dull, you’ll end up with jagged pieces. Slowly and carefully cutting with a sharp knife ensures smooth, visually appealing pieces of bark for display at your Halloween bash.

DIFFICULTY RATING:

Easy and fun, you’ll just want to be careful when breaking the bark apart if you want the best results for display.

 

Bat Bites

(Inspired by Chelsea’s Messy Apron)

These were probably my favorite since they’re so cute and require a little more effort, but in a fun, non-frustrating way. We didn’t use a baggie to apply the icing to adhere the eyes and wings, a butter knife tip did just fine. Keep in mind, whichever way you do it, less is more—you don’t want globs of icing spilling out from under the eyes.

One pro-tip is to cut the sandwich cookies! If you try to break them in half you’ll get splintered and messy halves. Use a knife to gently break the halves apart instead for cleaner wing edges.

Once you knock out one or two, these are actually quite easy, and you’ll be able to speed through the rest!

DIFFICULTY RATING:

There are a lot of components and you might make a couple mistakes in the beginning, but it is fairly simple once you get the hang of it.

 

Monster Rice Krispies Treats

(Inspired by Big Bear’s Wife)

Rice Krispies Treats are about as easy as you can get! We suggest making these along with the candy bark—you can use leftover melted chocolate to dip your squares for the monster hair and to apply the mouth (we used a toothpick to draw on the mouth). Stick the candy eyes on when it’s still gooey, and you’re done!

Pro-tip: after you cut and remove the Rice Krispies Treats from the pan, create the monster face on the flatter bottom side—we had one unfortunate-looking lumpy-faced monster that did not make the cut.

Difficulty Rating:

Rice Krispies Treats with a few finishing touches—it’s SPOOKY how simple it is!

 

Screaming Pretzels

(Inspired by Oriental Trading)

These were surprisingly more difficult than we’d anticipated. Dipping the pretzels in the chocolate resulted in them coming out lumpy and difficult to manage. It wasn’t until after we were done that we realized the original recipe had recommended adding a bit of vegetable oil into the melted chocolate “for easy dipping,” which may have helped with the lumpy issues we encountered.

Tough dipping aside, we still think these are absolutely hilarious and would be tempted to try again with the vegetable oil element!

Difficulty Rating:

Simple in theory, but we may have over-complicated things by forgetting to add vegetable oil. Share your results with us if you try this treat this season!

 

Pumpkin Patch Dirt Cups

(Inspired by I Can Teach My Child)

Our dirt cups were thankfully snafu-free. We used pudding cups to scoop into our serving cups to save time, and they turned out delicious. But you can absolutely make your own pudding if you have the time and dedication.

We already had cute beakers lying around the house, so we used those—picture a mad scientist Halloween party! However, you can pick up clear, plastic cups at your local grocery store; we would recommend something with a wider top, as our worms were bulky and took up too much space. If you encounter a similar issue, you can rip off a portion of the gummy and hide that behind the pumpkin, or plan ahead to bury their tail in the “dirt.”

Last tip: our pumpkin candies came with a bag with candy corn. Our recommendation is to toss the remaining candy because, well, it’s candy corn, yuck! Maybe that’s just us.

Difficulty Rating:

Very straightforward and quick!

 

Spider Candy

(Inspired by One Good Thing by Jillee)

While these turned out adorable, they were unfortunately a time-consuming treat to create. Breaking the pretzel legs off and carefully applying eight legs to each candy bar was simple but tedious. We at least saved some time by using eyeballs from our vast candy eyeball pile rather than create our own as done in the original recipe. Still, we definitely would not recommend using these for a large Halloween party, we tapped out after three spiders.

Difficulty Rating:

Overall simple but labor-intensive. These might be best suited as decorative accents for a food table rather than actual snack offerings for all party-goers.

 

Witch Brooms

(Inspired by Couponing to Disney)

After the lengthy process of the spider candy above we were very relieved this was last on our list. Take pretzel stick, insert into mini-peanut butter cup, display. DONE. This is as easy as it gets!

Difficulty Rating:

We did smash one peanut butter cup not realizing our own strength! So as long as you’re not too heavy-handed with these, they’re by far the quickest and simplest treats we tested.

 

Be sure to share photos of your spooky treats as you prepare for parties this season. Happy Halloween!