Creative Ways to Use Leftover Halloween Candy

It's 5 days after Halloween and I'm horrified that there are still two huge piles of trick or treat candy sitting on my counter top. My children (and husband) keep believing that they will just continue eating it all, but for the sake of their teeth and my hips and waist line I can't have all those sweets just sitting out like that.  Yes, I know I can pack them away in the cupboard or put it in the freezer but I also don't want to waste any of it either.  So being the creative mommy that I try to be, I am looking for ways to stretch out the calorie consumption of all that sugar by find ways to use the sweeties over a longer period of time.

I've thought of to use some of our leftover Halloween candy that might not be so horrifying for me and yet fun for my family.

1)  Make Snickers Salad - It uses up some of those mini Snickers bars and I've even used carmel Twix, Milky Way, Kit Kat bars.  Essentially I think you use anything with peanuts, caramel and/or chocolate and it will taste great.  If you use sugar free pudding and light Cool Whip or whipped cream you should have a fairly low sugar fruit based salad or dessert. (Made this today for a Bonfire Night BBQ!!!)

2)  Make trail mix with mini packages of M&Ms.  Mix together peanuts, raisins, M&M's, mini pretzels, Chex cereal and more to make a bit of a healthier snack but the M&M's add the sweet fun.

3)  Make a bowl of microwave popcorn for a family movie night and add in the mini bags of Skittles in it for a extra sweet taste with the salty popcorn.  Then share the whole bowl with the family and spread out the Skittles.

4)  Save the mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for a fun Thanksgiving crafty treat.  Make these Pilgrim Hat Cookies with the kiddos to get ready for the big meal.  You will have to pick up a package of fudge striped cookies but they loads of fun and you can share them with the whole family when they get together in a few weeks.

5)  For a special dessert one night, make Candy Bar Milkshakes.  Crush up any candy bars you've got left over and add them in with some frozen yogurt or sugar free ice cream and a splash of milk.

6)  I think I may save some of the small candies like M&M's, Smarties, gumdrops, Sweet Tarts, crushed up Dum-Dum suckers, etc. to use for decoraing Christmas sugar cookie or gingerbread houses.

7)  Tootsie Rolls are great but when they get hard you just can't eat them, so I found on Tootsie Roll's official website they have recipes for Tootsie Roll Cheesecake and Tootsie Roll Ice Cream Sauce which could be pretty good.  Also I found a recipe for Tootsie Roll fudge on the Taste of Home website and I'm thinking this might be a great new recipe I try for Christmas time.

8) For the rest of the candy that I can't cook with, I'd like to mix it in with some other little treats to create an advent calender for the kids to prepare for Christmas time.

I think the greatest thing about Halloween candies verse any other holiday's candies is that Thanksgiving and Christmas follow shortly after.  Not because it's the start of almost three months of sugar, but that there are probably thousands of ideas out there on how you can use all the chocolates, hard candies, and other sugary confections to make other tasty holiday treats and crafts.  If you have other ideas on how to stretch out the use of your Halloween candies I would love to hear from you.  Leave a comment below.  Thanks!

Tip for next year: When you select your Halloween candy to give away, make sure you pick things that if you do have leftovers you can have a plan on how to use for something else.