Halloween Dessert Ideas

While these snacks aren’t practical for trick or treaters, they make for delicious party desserts. Happy Halloween

How cool are these sugar cobweb lollipops?  Truth be told, I would be a little hesitant to eat the entire lollipop (because I hate candy *shock*), but they double up as interesting cupcake toppers and super cool decorations.

Regardless of how you use them, they are quite easy to make. As with all sugar art projects, you have to be extra careful because hot sugar can cause severe burns.

Spider Web Lollipops [makes 10, 1 1/2" dia. lollipops]

Ingredients:

- 1 1/2 cups isomalt

- 2 tbsp water

- silicon mat

- 10 candy sticks, or popsicle sticks

- royal icing, tinted black

- parchment triangles, for piping

- candy thermometer

- cold water bath (pot with cold water)

Directions:

-  In a small saucepan, combine isomalt and water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Keep a constant eye on the sugar, and heat until it reaches a 150′C  (hard crack stage) on your candy thermometer. Once 150′C is reached, dip the sauce pan into your cold water bath (just for a second, you don’t want the sugar to cool entirely, you just want to prevent it from continuing to cook– you’ll hear sizzle noises and see some steam, so don’t be scared)

- Pour 1 1/2″ diameter ‘blobs’ onto your silicon mat, and insert a candy stick if making lolipops. Allow to cool.

- When the isomalt cools, it should be hard and see through and lifts relatively easy off your silicon mat. Using your royal icing, pipe patterns onto the isomalt circles. Spiderwebs are fairly simple, but if you don’t have enough patience, scribbling is just as fun.

* I chose to use isomalt because it has similar properties to sugar, but has a higher point of caramelization. This means it will stay clear, where as table sugar would turn brown at the same temperature– it simply comes down to having a cool effect. Isomalt is a disaccharide, and a sugar substitute made from the sugar of beets. If you don’t mind the caramel color, this can be done using table sugar with the same method.

These vanilla ‘dirt’ cakes are my favorite of the bunch. They were made using vanilla cake batter that was spread on a cookie sheet. Once baked, I used a cookie cutter to cut out rounds, and stacked them to make mini cakes. I created a mote out of the middle layer to hold cherry pie filling, and when you bite into the cake, it looks extra gory. The final step is to spread out a crumb coat of buttercream, and roll the cake into chocolate wafer crumbs (or crushed oreos)

Vanilla Dirt Cakes:

Ingredients:

- favorite vanilla cake batter (spread on a cookie sheet, and baked)

- 15 chocolate wafer cookies, crushed

- 500 g, cherry pie filling

- 500 g, vanilla buttercream

- cupcake toppers were made using stickers from Martha Stewart’s collection. I peeled off the backing, and taped a toothpick to the back of these.

Directions

- Once you bake your vanilla sheet cake, cut round circles from the cake. Using buttercream as adhesive, stack layers of cake on top of one another.

- If you want to fill your cakes with cherry pie filling, cut a smaller circle out of the middle layer (so it looks like the letter “O”), and scoop your filling into the center

- Top the edges with buttercream, and seal with a top cake circle.

- Once you spread a rough coat of buttercream onto your mini-cakes, refrigerate for 20 minutes or until the buttercream hardens, just to make it easier (and less messy) when you roll them into the crushed cookies.

- You can always make vanilla dirt cupcakes by scooping out the centre of the cupcake, filling it with cherry filling, and topping it with buttercream

This is that ‘mote’ I was talking about. I used butter cream to seal the layers together, but I’m pretty sure I ate more along the way than I used to ice my mini cakes (Gross, I know).

Officially, I think this is my favorite picture. I want this cake right now.

Test Tube Party Favors

I thought this was a pretty cool way to package candy for party favors. I used acrylic test tubes that I found at my local craft store, but I’ve seen them at hobby shops too. I used cork stoppers so the candy won’t fall out.

If you’re having trouble getting gummy candy into the test tubes (gummi worms, etc), roll them in sugar first– it makes things a lot easier.