The trick is to get an appropriate treat.

October 26, 2012 9:10 PM

What small, easily-transportable treats can I make for reverse-trick-or-treat this year?

Last year my kids & a couple of their friends handed out small cellophane bags of small lollies (candy = M'n'M's and the like) and small homemade choc chip cookies. Not all of the cookies survived the trip up one side of the block and down the other side due to the boisterous nature of the carriers!

I'd like to make something a bit more Halloween-ish this year, with a spider or bat or ghost theme. But I'll be escorting a small group of kids who tend to get over-excited, I don't know that cookies or cupcakes iced (frosted) with designs would survive the trip.

Any suggestions?

PS: we're in Australia. The weather will be warm. Icing (frosting) melts.

posted by malibustacey9999 to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

Best answer: Caramel popcorn balls wrapped in orange cellophane with black ribbons?
posted by DoubleLune at 9:13 PM on October 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Rice krispy treats? Studded with candies? Candied apples? Brittles?
posted by tipsyBumblebee at 10:02 PM on October 26, 2012

I'm an American living in Sydney... and my first two thoughts were mentioned by DoubleLune and tipsyBumblebee! When I was a kid, a lady down the street made Popcorn Balls every year - not caramel, though - just straight up corn syrup! Loved them. Maybe caramel/candy apple slices (easier/safer to eat)? I love peanut brittle, but I have trouble with hard candy in humid weather... tricky. Bags of Caramel Corn would work too. This is a great recipe. I'd leave out the peanuts unless you're sure no-one's allergic. (Almonds would be good too.) I made chocolate-chip pumpkin cookies and pumpkin bread this afternoon... memail me if you want the recipes.
posted by jrobin276 at 10:45 PM on October 26, 2012

Spiced nuts! I've made the ones from this recipe in the past before, and they were awesome, dead simple, and sure to travel well. If you want to make them more Halloween-y just call them candied cockroaches or something ridiculously like that.
posted by Diagonalize at 12:49 AM on October 27, 2012

Best answer: Rice Krispie treats, dye them and decorate with meted chocolate (or royal icing, which also dries hard).

• Make jack-o-lanterns with orange and green dyed treats and pipe on a chocolate face--if you form them while the treats are as warm as you can handle then they will melt together and form a fairly solid treat.
• Use three colors, form it into rows in your pan, and cut out triangles after it hardens so that you get candy corn (you could make white by mixing in white chocolate, or you could do brown-orange-yellow by mixing in normal chocolate for the brown).
• Make the treats as normal and pipe chocolate decorations on them before they cool.

You could also make brownies, pipe on decorations with royal icing, and then after it hardens wrap very firmly with plastic wrap.

In general, the tighter you wrap what you make, the better they'll hold up. Also make sure the kids are carrying hard-sided containers (i.e. the traditional plastic pumpkin) with some soft padding around the inside and over the top to keep your treats from bouncing out.

You should make sure that your non-homemade treats are Halloween-y, too... Candy corn and those eyeball jawbreakers! (You could make candy corn at home, by the way, but it's kind of a pain to make a large quantity... Also the homemade version is less sturdy than the mass produced version.)
posted by anaelith at 5:43 AM on October 27, 2012

Best answer: I did some rice krispie treats recently and just threw in a bunch of sprinkles for color. Easy peasy.
posted by chiababe at 5:54 AM on October 27, 2012

I tend to do my daughter's birthday party with a Halloween theme (it's in October) and this year I made breadsticks in bat, ghost and cat shapes. (You could probably make spiders too, those are just the shapes I already had cookie cutters for.) It was nice to have something tasty that wasn't sweet (since there were cupcakes for the party too). If you're giving these to adults, they might appreciate something more savory as well as sweet (especially if they'll have leftover Halloween candy). Scones or biscuits could probably be cut-out pretty easily too, but might be more crumbly to carry.
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:36 AM on October 27, 2012

Response by poster: Well, life intervened and I ran out of time to be too adventurous, so I threw together some Rice Krispie (or Rice Bubbles as we call them here in Oz) treats at the last minute. And they were very warmly received by our lovely neighbours. The fact that they were delivered by a serial killer, the Joker and an Emily The Strange wannabe might have helped that warm reception. Ha.

(3 tablespoons real butter, melted with a whole packet of pink and white marshmallows, and then combined with 6 cups of Rice Bubbles and pressed into a slice tray. Easy as. They'll definitely be a Halloween staple in future years.)

Thanks, all.
posted by malibustacey9999 at 11:45 AM on October 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Oh, and we wrapped them in orange cellophane tied with black ribbon and they looked great, thanks for that suggestion, DoubleLune.
posted by malibustacey9999 at 11:47 AM on October 31, 2012