Photo by NCReedplayer
Halloween might be over, but it is not forgotten at the Frugal Upstate household. Despite the fact that we get over 200 trick or treaters a year, we still somehow wound up with leftover candy and the perennial question: “What do we do with leftover Halloween Candy?!”
I asked my friends on Twitter and we came up with 12 great ideas for using up leftover Halloween candy:
1. Save it for your holiday gingerbread houses (via VisitFingerLake)
2. Freeze it for later.
3. Add a cup at a time to rice crispy squares (via Jeremy Wright). If it’s chocolate or easily meltable let the mix cool a bit first
4. Chop and roll candy apples into crushed candy.
5. Chop and use as icecream topping or as a decorative/tasty topping for an iced cake.
6. Toss into homemade trail mix.
7. Chop and mix into brownies. Peppermint Patties or any chocolates/candy bars are especially good.
8. Make Molten Candy Cookies. Just take chocolate chip cookie or sugar cookie dough and wrap a ball around a mini chocolate bar.
9. Make Leftover Candy Cake.
10. Make (via Feels Like Home)
11. Donate the extra candy to a rehab center (via MommyBlogExpert) a nursing home (via backhomeagain) or a shelter (via luciagia)
12. Sell it to your dentist (via KingdomFirstMom and jodirotondo). Really! There is a program called “Halloween Candy Buy Back” that many dentists participate in.
So what do you do with your leftover candy. . . besides eat it!
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Really you mean there are options beyond me eating all the chocolate types? 🙂 I can think of so many uses for the chocolate types, but then again I do have a huge weakness for chocolate.
I love the idea of using some to decorate gingerbread houses in the upcoming month or so. My daughter is already asking to make one thanks to all the Christmas displays already. This will be a perfect use for those pretty candies that no one in our house seems to like. Now if I could just keep from eating the ones I do – we’d be in business. I’d put some in the freezer for later, but seriously our freezer is packed. We are working on using stuff from it, not adding to it at the moment.
We send our children to our small private church school, so I volunteered to go in a couple of Friday’s to help the children make a Christmas pinata for art class. We made a star shape, and decorated it. Then I stuffed it full of leftover candy. We hung it in the classroom till Christmas. Then the whole school (all 16 of them) had fun breaking it for during their school Christmas party. Fun art project… our children only brought a fraction of the candy… gave them a cool room decor… and a fun game for their party. Win. Win. Win. Win.
Leftover candy? Sadly, that has never been an issue at my house. We live way out in the country so we don’t get many trick-or-treaters, and I seldom buy candy to have around. So when any does make its way into the house it disappears pretty darn quick!
I learned this year that there is a local roller skate rink that takes 1 lb of candy for a free skate on November 1st. We were out of town, but I think this is so cool.
They send the candy to the troops!
I just saw on hillbilly housewife, that you can turn all of your candy into a candy wreath for the holidays! It looked really cool and could be a great hostess gift for the family that might be having you over for thanksgiving or Christmas.
What I have been doing for the past few years is to separate the melt-able candies from the ones that won’t. The melt-able ones are melted and added to frosting for cupcakes throughout the year. I also use any caramel/chocolate type candies for my turtle bars I make for platters every December.
Ooh! Just remembered a few more things I do:
I make chocolate popcorn every year for the holidays and sometimes I melt the chocolate bars and mix in with the popcorn. It is divine with microwave kettle corn popcorn.
Also, I use them to make chocolate bark each year. Our favorite combination is milk chocolate topped with chopped up butterfingers and crushed butterscotch candies. Drizzle a little more chocolate on top, let cool and break apart.
I’m surprised nobody has brought this up…but I use leftover candy as fill-ups for Christmas stockings!
Also, they make great “yes I practiced” prizes for my piano students.
In a magazine I read about a cool website that encourages kids (and hungry parents) to use up their candy in cool science experiments:
http://www.candyexperiments.com/
I think we’ll be using it to save us all from ourselves!
I love the idea of buying back the candy from the kids and then donating it to a food charity.
I posted a comment about this in a link I came across here:
http://www.examiner.com/x-12285-Omaha-StayatHome-Moms-Examiner~y2009m11d2-What-to-do-with-all-that-Halloween-candy-you-dont-want-your-child-to-consume
That’s such a great idea!! I don’t Live in Omaha anymore but I think I will offer my kids the cash myself and pay them in dimes. My daughter collects dimes(I tried to tell her quarters are “better” to collect but she loves dimes). How empowering and educational for kids to get some coin for all their “hard work”. Now I don’t have to feel guilty for sneaking a mini-snickers or two when they are not looking. I think we will all feel better donating the candy to our local food charity instead of having the big old bowl of tooth decaying calories tempting us! I also think there is a hidden lesson somewhere here about entitlement and “how much is enough”.
November 6, 12:11 PM
I take left over Halloween candy to a children’s shelter (aka modern day orphanage). They get so many kids there, and they don’t get a chance to trick o treat. Plus the shelter uses it to incent good behavior, plus active participation in their on-site school. And, they too freeze candy, to help ensure they have candy throughout the year…..but don’t worry, as they have good controls to not give out too much candy and let kids bounce off the walls with a sugar high!
SewCalGal
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