Good Morning. I have never aspired to be a genius in the kitchen, which by all accounts of my hearty Polish upbringing is so very wrong. There are a few things where I claim master title status – baked meat is right up there. I am a cole slaw champ. Potatoes 12 ways is my forte.

Sweets, not so much. Every once in a while I torture myself by throwing an issue of Martha Stewart Living down on the belt at the grocery store check out. I get all revved up, go buy bunches of ingredients, even a special pan or tool. My sweets still look like a 4-year-old made them.

Thankfully, this year, the 4-year-old totally wanted to help me get my Halloween Martha on… and it turned out we were an excellent pair in the not-so-pretty but oh-so-yummy department.

Warning: there is nothing low cal or even remotely sugar-free in this group of recipes. What’s the point? When you screw up, it might as well be with chocolate and marshmallows!

Marshmallow Ghosts

So, let me say first that the most important element to the success of these guys is putting them together with toothpicks. I didn’t, and they collapsed… and we got the incredible chocolate-covered crispy rice squares out of the deal. It wasn’t terrible. But, just remember the toothpicks!

Ingredients:

- Marshmallows
- About 2 Tbsp of butter
- Toothpicks
- Chocolate sparkles

Directions:

1. Melt down about 1/4 of a bag of large marshmallows and the butter in a double boiler (I just put a pyrex bowl over boiling water in a pot),
2. Take two marshmallows. Dip one in the melted version, stick a toothpicks in. Then, attach the other one with the toothpick, and
3. Insert eyes.

Chocolate-covered Crispy Rice Bars

With your leftover melted marshmallow bits, you can make a more sinful version of old skool Rice Crispy treats.

Ingredients:

- Marshmallows
- 2 C crispy rice cereal
- 1 C chocolate meltaways
- Butter

Directions:

1. Melt down the rest of those marshmallows,
2. Throw the crispy rice cereal in with the marshmallow mix,
3. Put butter on a glass pan and put the mixture into the pan, spreading it out. Butter on the spoon or the spatula helps with the gooeyness of the mallows,
4. Meanwhile, put the chocolate meltaways on the double boiler,
5. Spread the chocolate over the other mixture in the pan, and
6. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes before cutting into squares and eating.

Pumpkin Seed Bark

This one was by far my favorite. The kiddo thought it was huge because she got to lick the bowl and it was a perfect way to use up the seeds from the pumpkin (although I did cheat and use store-bought seeds too).

Ingredients:

- Pumpkin seeds
- Olive Oil
- Dash of salt
- Chocolate meltaways

Directions:

1. Put the pumpkin seeds on a cookie sheet and mix with about 1 Tbsp of oil and a dash of salt. Toast for about 5 minutes (store bought or 20 minutes fresh seeds) at 350 degrees,
2. Take your double boiler and melt down those chocolates,
3. Mix the seeds and the chocolate together, spread thinly on the cookie sheet and put in the freezer for at least an hour. Yum.

Cobweb Dusted Cupcakes

Skip the frosting this year and go for something a bit more refined. OK, so frosting and powdered sugar are equal in the refined sugar department. But, this was a fun way for us to make the beloved cupcakes and bust out the craft stencils/paint brushes for decoration purposes.

Ingredients:

- Your favorite cupcake mix or recipe
- Powdered sugar
- A small, new paint brush
- Stencils

Directions:

1. Make your cupcakes and wait for them to cool, and
2. Take the stencils, lay them over the top of the cupcake and “paint” the powdered sugar onto the cupcake.

Super sweet, fun and almost healthy. I had a few other treats in the works too. But, I totally sugar crashed before I could get to them.

I hope these sweet treats make your holiday spook-tacular!