When I agreed to bake fun Halloween-themed treats, I didn’t anticipate myself standing in my kitchen at 11:30 p.m. attempting to salvage a batch of brownies. However, while these didn’t all go according to plan, I eventually managed to pull it together and make a few festive baked goods. Armed with a million candy googly eyes and enough food dye to stain my hands, I set off on my baking journey.

While many baking aficionados would tell you that box mixes don’t count, the one hill that I will die on is the Ghirardelli brownie mix. The product is not only affordable and convenient, but arguably tastes better than the homemade kind. Although the brownie base was pretty easy to make, the decorating was what threw me off. My original plan was to create a pumpkin patch with green frosting and candy corn, but this became impossible after my royal icing — which I whipped together out of water and powdered sugar — refused to comply, and the pumpkin candy corn looked too big and out of place. So, I decided to scrap that idea and create some graveyard-inspired brownies instead. To achieve the perfect dirt effect, I crushed up some Oreo cookies and used melted chocolate to make sure they would stay on the brownies. The gravestone, although imperfect, was carved out of a graham cracker with “RIP” written in melted chocolate on top. These were definitely fun to make, but I’m not sure how well the idea translated into reality.

My next adventure was Frankenstein’s Monster Rice Krispie Treats (no, not Dr. Frankenstein himself — we see you Mary Shelley). Appearance-wise, these were almost my favorite. I did add an absolutely inordinate amount of green food dye to the mix, but a small dose of green chemical never hurt anybody. One of my biggest struggles was ensuring that the top of the treats were flat to create a smoother surface for my decorations. When I poured the freshly made Rice Krispie Treats into a pan, I simply used a spatula to compress it. I ended up using the same melted chocolate from the brownies for the hair and the facial details, which was much more efficient. Instead of using a piping bag since they were smaller details, I put the chocolate in a Ziploc bag and cut the corner off to create an easier
method of decorating. Photographing them may have been a struggle, but it was all worth it for the adorable results. The eyes do make them look a little bit insane, but he is a monster, after all.

My final endeavor for this baking series was making spider cookies. Since the body of each spider was made of a peanut butter cup, I chose to make peanut butter cookies to go along with it. Unfortunately, they lacked the volume I’d hoped for. The peanut butter cups, though, completely made up for it. Instead of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that dominate the industry, I used my all-time favorites: The Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups. They’re significantly more rich, with a perfect peanut butter to chocolate ratio that worked well with the cookies. For the legs, I made another batch of melted chocolate, which I also used to glue on the googly eyes. I continued with my Ziploc bag piping strategy, a method that has yet to fail me. Piping out the legs was a slightly harrowing experience, as I don’t always have a steady hand, but a fear of failure drove me to try my best in recreating the spindly spider legs that could make or break the cookie. If I were to rank them compared to the others, I would rate it above the Frankenstein’s Monster Rice Krispies, simply because of how adorable they were along with the enticing peanut butter cup on top. Halloween is the epitome of the fall season, and scary desserts are the perfect embodiment of a holiday filled with fright and sweets. I would consider myself relatively adept at following a recipe, but these treats turned out to be more of a challenge than expected while I went off the path to create the cutest and most delicious treats possible. The ups and downs of the all baking adventure were unexpected but joyous, and gave me an amazing excuse to eat more sugar than anyone needs this close to Halloween.