Top 8 spooky treats for Halloween
You can always appease them with treats, and there are plenty out there to satisfy the longest fanged, greenest of hair, and tallest, black-hatted spook.
We can make plenty at home, of course, popping corn and bagging it, sprinkled with a little salt or grated cheese.
We can also make chocolate chip cookies (always a hit with the masses) or mini muffins, avoiding thick over-sugary toppings and instead using a light buttercream or fresh cream and jam.
A little dusting of icing sugar always looks good, and piped icing sugar and water cobweb is easy.
Looking for good value and minimal additives, there was plenty on the shelves to chose from.
I particularly liked the Marks & Spencer fingers, shaped long and painted beautifully with coloured icing for fingernails. They are easy enough to replicate. Use a shortbread recipe for the base.
If you want to go all out for this festive season, log onto www.apieceofcakemunster.com which will deliver a themed afternoon tea party, with all the Halloween treats you could wish for and for any number.
For the rest of us, we only need to add a few scary jellies and swirl some orange and dark coloured jelly together with some icecream for a disgusting looking, but delicious knickerbocker glory-style drink.
Use pumpkin or coffin-shaped pastry cutters to make sandwiches for sustenance.
The little horrors may be glad of something savoury later.
Special occasions aside, we need to steer kids away from sugary treats, ensuring good dental health and habits.
Including something savoury is a first step and giving them water soon afterwards will help.
Based in Rochestown, Cork, this haven of good food produces delicious treats, including these skeletons, bats, and pumpkins which are made of light biscuit coated in chocolate and coloured icing.
Pick up excellent savoury tarts there for the night too. One of our top choices.
Sugar-coated toasted almonds covered in chocolate are delicious and our favourites from here, but a net bag of chocolate pumpkins at €1 are good value too.
There are also ghostly marshmallows to toast in the dark for €2. From Tiger shops nationwide.
Terrific value here with currants, sultanas, candied peel and a ring.
There are plenty of bracks around, and, toasted with melting butter, this is as good as many of them. Kids may like a slice when they call.
Four lollies in appropriately scary shapes are made from yoghurt and cream. They come with quite a lot of dried glucose syrup which is not as sweet as expected, perhaps offset by the natural strawberry flavour.
The various starches and stablisers give a slight chalkiness, but they are a welcome break from hard sugar sweets.
We looked for something savoury to relieve the sweet treats for trick or treaters and these were the only ones we spotted in supermarkets.
The 14 packs seemed good value, and while 1.7% salt is high for children, a pack has 0.37g, which if other salty foods are avoided for the day, is fine. 2.1% saturated fat and 7% protein is acceptable as a treat, but MSG and other additives made us wary.
Fifteen mini bags of mini fingers, dinosaurs, and other animals coated in chocolate make good treats for callers to the house.
The biscuits are light and the milk chocolate combined amount to 6.1g of sugar per pack. Acceptable for an occasional treat, and tasty.
A cellophane bag containing 11 bags of eight Horror Mix chewy jellies is good value. While glucose syrup and sugar are the main ingredients, the flavourings are natural and taste it too.
Good for handing out, especially when there are lots of callers.
We were attracted to these wonderful biscuity spooky fingers to have with ice-cream on Halloween night. They have great nail varnish colours like a Farrow & Ball catalogue of greys, blues, and greens.
The foil-wrapped chocolate lollies (3 for €2.30) were substantial and good for a more extravagant giveaway.
