Pre-Halloween is a time when all the candy at the grocery store looks so good and somehow an impulse buy of 4 bags happens.
And those seasonal and special edition bags of candy that Target sells, don’t even get me started. Because of the ‘Limited Edition’ factor, it’s suddenly more appealing, you go into hoard mode, and buy even more.
On top of it, the 75 trick-or-treaters you were expecting really only materializes into 7 kids, 3 of which were infants-in-arms.
Whoa, you now have a lotta candy.
Whoa, I have a lotta candy recipes.
For the most part, the candy used in the recipes is pretty interchangeable and can be mixed-and-matched. For example, M&Ms and Reese’s Pieces are easily swapped.
Or rather than using 12 Fun-Sized Snickers bars, if you have 7, along with a few 100 Grand Bars, and some random Baby Ruth’s, you’re set.
1. Chewy Chocolate Peanut Butter Butterfinger Bars (GF, keep vegan by using Peanut Butter Cups instead of Butterfingers)
2. Chocolate Peanut Butter Kit Kat Crunch Bars (keep vegan and GF by using Peanut Butter Cups instead of Kit Kats) – This bar and the bar above are my current two favorite no-bake bars of the year
3. Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Dough Crumble Bars – This is probably my favorite baked bar this year
4. Milky Way Chocolate Cookie Crumble Bars – The chocolate answer to the bar above
5. Double Chocolate Caramel Corn & Cocoa Rice Krispies Candy Bars (no-bake, GF)
6. Triple Peanut Butter Monster Cookie Bars
7. Loaded M&M Oreo Cookie Bars – This recipe has been pinned over 100k times in 6 weeks
8. Homemade Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies – Some of the best brownies I’ve ever made
9. Candy Corn White Chocolate M&M Blondies
10. Loaded Fudgy Candy Bar Brownies
11. Soft and Chewy M&Ms Cookies
12. Reese’s Pieces Soft Peanut Butter Cookies
13. Candy Corn and White Chocolate Softbatch Cookies
14. Soft and Chewy Snickers Chocolate Chip Cookies
15. Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Fluffernutter Cookies with Peanut Butter Buttercream – The photos do not do these cookies justice. PB Cookies, stuffed with Reese’s, marshmallows, and topped with PB buttercream. No words
16. Twix Bar Chocolate Chip Cookies
17. Trail Mix Peanut Butter Cookies – NO flour, NO butter, and I didn’t add any white sugar
18. Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peanut Butter Cups and Peanut Butter M&M’s
19. Ritz Stuffed Peanut Butter Cups (no-bake, vegan)
20. Caramel-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Cups
Thanks for the entries in the Moleskine Evernote Smart Notebook Giveaway
What do you do with your leftover candy? What’s your favorite candy?
Have a safe and happy pre-Halloween weekend!
These are all great ideas, Averie! Love the Kit Kat bars!
Looks Spook-tacular to me! Can’t wait to try!
I’m dying here. Everything looks incredible! INCREDIBLE.
I can usually wait until after Halloween for the candy – then I hit up the sales, and it.is.ON.
Nice roundup! My teeth are hurting whilst my stomach is growling, just from looking at the photos. I just love Halloween!!
Thanks for all your comments today! :)
You are a MASTER at Halloween-ing! I want to go to the house that hands these out as treats instead…
Your food is always so fun!
This is such a dangerous list! I’ve been avoiding the candy aisle (heck, I try to avoid it at all times of the year) like crazy. Unfortunately, I have no trick or treaters in my apartment building, so I don’t really have an excuse to buy bags of it–I have no control when it comes to candy, haha!
BUT that doesn’t mean I can’t make myself one of these! :)
That’s good that you can avoid the candy aisle! Me, well, not exactly :)
You are the queen of the loaded candy bar/cookie!
You are the candy master Averie! I realize the point of this round up is to make good use of candy we ALREADY have, but I’m also seeing a lot of great reasons to go our and buy more ;-)
At least it’s on sale this week :)
So much yumminess! All these bars and cookies and candies! I am in Halloween candy heaven. Now I just need to find some and more than my little sister us going to get tricker treating down main street. They just do not hand out the best candy around here! :(
That’s crazy you have a lil sis that’s still of trick or treating age! I bet she and my daughter are about the same (my daughter is 6 1/2)
I think I need to go trick or treating just so that I can have the candy to make all of these!
Wow, I’ve never realized how many recipes you had that incorporated candy. What a great post Halloween post. I’m sure you’re going to get tons of people hitting your blog about 2-3 days after Halloween looking for fun ways to use up all that candy.
We always have leftover candy and usually just donate it to the dentist around day 2 and save the good candy like m&m’s, peanut butter cups for movie nights. My kids would rather have a baked treat than eat their candy, but seeing that you have so many recipes that use Halloween candy, I can come over here and create something fun! :) xoxo, Jackie
I realized after I wrote the post that it may be good for a google searches/SEO after the holiday – hey, that’s cool. I’ll take it!
That’s funny you donate your candy to…the dentist! of all places. Oh, the irony.
My kids would rather have a baked treat than eat their candy <---I agree with them :) But yeah you can just bake it right in!
:) Chocolate never is left over in our home…however the other junky treats are…
Any suggestions on what to make with skittles, gummy treats, starbursts, sweetarts, lollipops, etc?
The chocolate recipes looks DEEEEEEELICIOUS! :)
The problem is that sugar based candy like that (without much/if any fat) is going to pretty much melt/turn runny under heat and it’s very hard to bake with it. You could mix some of it into some Chex Mix/puppy chow type of creations but those kinds of candy are trickier. I actually love those kinds of candies before a run. 50 or 100 calories of pure sugar…gives me a nice little boost :)
Brownies are my favorite platform for candy! AND you have amazing recipes for that. Sign me up! Do you think Milk-Duds would bake okay in cookies or do you think that candy will get too hard/chewy?
I think Milk Duds would be fine as long as you used them sort of like I did with the caramels in item #20. They have to be shielded with dough or they’d get too hard I fear. But would be good in stuffed cookies/cookie cups.
Even though I don’t really eat this kind of stuff, I’m not gonna lie, these all look freaking delicious!!
I like to chop up leftover candy and put it into melted super dark chocolate and make my own candy bar….and I’d love to just take a day off work, buy a huge bag of candy and bake/stir up a bunch of these bars. Wow–I’m wide awake now just from looking at the selection and am possibly wavering again about which one to make for the party next weekend!
That’s funny that you’re wavering again…well, hey, at least I’m doing my job and getting you thinking :)