As I look across my living room where there was once a dining room table, now stands a glistening pile of Halloween candy: Kit-Kats, M&M’s, Jujubees, Snickers bars, and many other brightly colored, crisply wrapped candy treats. My kid just woke up from a sugar coma and things are going to be OK. But what to do with this mountain of candy?
When I was a kid I had a special drawer in my desk. It started out as my secret Halloween candy stash, but by March it became the place where candy goes to die — kind of like a Florida for candy bars. If you’re like me, you probably can’t stand the thought of taking all that candy and throwing it out, right? So what can you do with it?
Last week I dragged an old air conditioning unit out to the curb where it was quickly picked up by an old guy in a pickup truck. He told me that he drives around town pillaging people’s garbage for scrap metal, which he then sells by the pound. He’s turning free stuff into cash. Pretty smart, right? Well, this gave me an idea. Why not take all this free candy, strip the valuables from it and turn it into edible gold?
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups – Take all of your peanut butter cups and put them into a food processor with a bit of peanut oil (enough to make the mixture smooth like peanut butter). Then process it into a paste which you can use to spread on sandwiches, or warm croissants. If you think peanut butter is hot stuff, wait till you load your kids up with this in the morning.
M&Ms and Reese's Pieces – These candy-coated chocolate chips are extremely versatile. You can bake them into cup cakes, mix them into pancakes, sprinkle them into your cereal, mix them into popcorn (after popping), use them as ice cream topping, and bake them into cookies.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2011.