Spooktacular ideas for Halloween treats, fun

The pumpkins have been carved into Halloween jack-o’-lanterns, perhaps more than you need. One or two to stand on the porch, another to light up with a candle set inside. Then?

How about making a jack-o’-lantern part of a yummy treat? Consider using its round, mellow shape as a container for a clutch of edible fuzzy, chocolate Wolfman Cookie Pops that youngsters will wolf down.

A pumpkin makes a container for a clutch of edible monsters for youngsters to wolf down. Preparing the cookies can be a family project.

Preparing the cookies can be a family project. After they are baked, recruit the children to decorate those monster faces with candy fangs and ears and eyes. Little hands also can help stir the coconut mixture that makes the wolfman’s “furry” coat. Then, the cookie pops have to be grouped in the pumpkin, and the pumpkin set on the table as a centerpiece.

Here’s the recipe to get the project under way.

It will make about 14 cookies; plan to decorate and use eight for a pop cookie “bouquet” in your jack-o’-lantern. More tends to look crowded. If you reroll dough scraps you’ll get even more cookies, and any leftover, undecorated cookies will taste just as good.

Wolfman Cookie Pops

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For the Cookies:

1 cup unsalted butter or margarine

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 to 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup shredded coconut, chopped and toasted

For the Decorations:

14-ounce package light cocoa chocolate disks or chocolate candy wafers

Candy corn

Yellow candy disks

3 cups shredded coconut

Brown icing color

Small black candy-coated chocolate dot candies

Eight 8-inch cookie treat sticks

To make cookies: Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

¢ Enter LJWorld.com’s Halloween recipe contest for a chance to win a T-shirt and a gift certificate to The Bay Leaf!

Cream butter and sugar in mixer bowl. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix baking powder and flour; add to butter mixture one cup at time, mixing after each addition. If dough is too soft, add up to 1/2 cup additional flour, a little at a time. Stir in 1 cup coconut. Do not chill dough.

Divide dough into two balls. On floured surface, roll each into a circle about 12 inches in diameter and 1/4-inch-thick. Cut out cookies with 4-inch-diameter floured cutters. Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet on middle rack of oven 6 to 7 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool completely before decorating.

To decorate 8 Wolfman Cookie Pops: Cut enough chocolate candy disks into triangles for 16 ears; reserve remaining disks. Cut candy corn just above orange area for teeth. Cut yellow candy disks for eyes.

In large bowl, tint coconut with brown icing color. In small bowl melt remaining chocolate candy disks (over hot water or in microwave).

Working with one cookie at a time, spread a fine layer of melted chocolate candy over cookie, just enough to hold coconut. Press coconut over cookie, leaving mouth area uncovered; let set. Use dabs of melted chocolate candy to attach to cookie faces the candy ears, teeth, eyes and black dot candies for eye pupils and noses; hold ears until set. Attach cookie treat stick to cookie back, also with melted candy; hold until set. Allow all decorations to set firmly before arranging as desired in container or on plates. Makes 8 decorated cookies.

New York (ap) — Dylan Lauren, co-owner of Dylan’s Candy Bar with its two floors of sweet treats, is ready to share some of her favorite recipe ideas to make at home.”I love Halloween because it is an official splurge day,” she says happily. “It is the best excuse to enjoy all the candy you could ever want.”Try these for a taste of weird:¢ Spooky graveyard: In a dish, make a bottom layer of chocolate pudding; top this with “dirt” made of crushed chocolate-sandwich cookies, gravestones made of whole cookies, plus marshmallow ghosts and gummy worms.¢ Candy corn crispy rice treats: Make crispy rice cereal treats with your favorite recipe, but include candy corn and butterscotch chips as ingredients, and use red and yellow food coloring to dye it all orange.¢ Chocolate spiders: Use chocolate-sandwich cookies for the body, black licorice for legs, and candy buttons for eyes. Glue spiders together with soft caramel or marshmallow.¢ Pond scum: Make individual servings of green gelatin dessert with gummy worms squirming in and out of the surfaces.