Here in Western MA, Halloween celebrations start about two weeks before the big day. I think this is nice, it gives families a chance to really savor the festivities. This year my crew marched in a Halloween parade through town, went to a Halloween party at the fire station, trick or treated in downtown Northampton, and trick or treated in our neighborhood.
Most of the Halloween candy came from our neighborhood. Our neighbors are super generous and gave HANDFULLS of fun size bars. We also got three full size bars, which is something I never got as a kid. In total we ended up with over five pounds of candy. We will be eating a piece of candy a day until next Halloween if we don’t come up with some other ideas on what to do with our leftover Halloween candy.
Sell it. Many dentists are participating in a buy back program. Your child can take his or her candy to a participating dentist and they’ll pay per pound. The candy they collect is getting sent to the troops overseas. Click here for more information.
Send it to the troops! You can donate it to the troops via Operation Gratitude. Learn more about Operation Gratitude here.
Donate your leftover Halloween candy. Many homeless shelters, crisis relief centers, and food pantries take candy donations. If you’ve got excess, why not share some with someone in need?
Leave goodie bags for your mailman, garbage collector, meter reader, or recycling worker. I’m sure they’d be stoked to have a little treat in the middle of their work day.
Take your leftover Halloween candy to the office. My husband’s coworkers devour just about anything I send in. I think a bowl full of chocolates left in the break room would be a huge hit.
Bake with it. This Snickers cookie idea looks amazing, but I’d probably add them to homemade sugar cookie dough instead of buying premade. You could also chop bits of candy and use them in place of chocolate chips in cookies, add them to brownies, or to top a cake. The options are endless really.
Save your leftover Halloween candy. Chopped candy will also freeze well. Freeze it in 1 cup increments for maximized baking. See above for uses. Or hide some for a movie night at home later on this fall/winter.
Save it to celebrate the December holidays with. Use some of your leftover Halloween candy in your Advent countdown, Hanukkah nights, to decorate holiday cookies, or to decorate a gingerbread house. Why buy what you’ve already got?
Try some Halloween candy science! Kid’s Heath is full of candy experiment ideas. We are going to try the Skittles Density Rainbow.
Share it. Do you know of someone who has a child with a food allergy? It is likely that the child got a ton of candy they can’t enjoy. Give them the candy from your stash that you know they CAN enjoy.
Celebrate with it! Hosting a party soon? Sneak away some of your leftover Halloween candy now and use it to stuff a pinata!
What are you doing with your leftover Halloween candy? What was the first piece you snatched from your kids? Sadly, Malone didn’t get any 1000 Grands, but I settled for a Kit Kat.
This is one area that I do not meddle in. It belongs to my kiddo and I just say things like “hey, that’s enough for now, yeah?” She puts it in a bag on the shelf and is good at self regulating. She carefully picked out a piece to bring to her teacher this morning. I actually just threw away a bunch from *last* year that she forgot about!
What a sweet one you’ve got. Malone chose a piece very carefully for me this morning. It was really sweet to see him paw through his loot to find just the right one. We’ll probably send MOST of it into Daddy’s office soon. Five pounds is TOO MUCH.
We ration it and the kids get one piece after dinner (if they eat all their food). This system has worked out pretty well so far, with periodic refills at Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter. We keep it in the fridge, so the ants don’t find it. I’ve been known to sneak a piece (or five) after the kids go to bed!!
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Oh! Good idea to keep it in the fridge! We have WAY TOO MUCH and he’ll get more at Christmas. I’ve had a few pieces too, which isn’t helping my lose the baby weight goal.
I was just remembering that I once made a Snickers pie with leftover Snickers bars! I’m sure it can translate into most chocolate candy. It was for an ex boyfriend and it was early in the relationship. I think he fell in love with me over that pie.
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Of course you one made a Snickers pie! Sounds very tasty! There are tons of things to do with left over candy, if you really start to think about it!
Iactually really like the dentist idea. Initially I was like “what??” don’t they hate candy, but I guess sending it to troops over seas who need quick energy could be a good thing. I don’t buy candy, but if I had candy laying around I would definitely give it away to others. 🙂
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They hate candy because it ruins our teeth. I think they’d much rather give a kid a dollar a pound and send it to the troops! We’ve got TONS AND TONS left over here. I’m not sure which route we’ll end up taking yet.
Some great ideas! Our church is collecting left over candy to put in Thanksgiving gift baskets. I love the idea of leaving a little something for our mail deliverer, though… I think we will make a little bag up for her!
Thanksgiving gift baskets is also a great idea. Our church is a baby church (just 9 months old) so they don’t have any programs in place like that yet. We left a treat out for our oil delivery man the other day. I spied from the window and he was both surprised and pleased.
Great tips friend!! We usually let the kids have it for a while and then end up throwing it away. I believe I brought some of the candy from last year to the kids’ church classes.
Bringing some to share with friends is also a good idea. I HATE throwing food away, so we’re going to find a way to make sure it all has a happy home this year.
My kids usually forget about the candy! I put it all in separate ziploc bags, labeled with their names on it and keep it in the pantry. At first, they ask for some every day, after Halloween but this year, it’s hasn’t even been a week and they’ve stopped asking every day, just when it occurs to them that there’s candy with their name on it. LOL. I threw out most of the candy that is 100% sugar or gets stuck in teeth, leaving them with the crappy chocolate (not much better!) and lollipops.
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Malone is NOT forgetting about it. The kid has a memory like no other. The other day he asked where one of his full size bars went….
I usually find some creative way to use it. All the m&m’s go into cookies & chocolate bars get chopped up for ice cream sundaes.
Ah! Ice cream sundae toppings! That is a brilliant idea !
[…] Halloween candy situation is out of control in this house, even after writing about what do to with all of that leftover candy. I’ve still got quite the stash staring me in the face, so it is time to start baking with […]
My mom lives in the plains of Easthampton so we head over there. We made a yummy brownie cookie combo with a lot of our candy. I shared it on my blog 🙂
Awesome! My good friend Trish lives in the plains. I wonder if your mom knows her?
These are SUPER ideas! All that candy is enough to drive me bonkers! LOL
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NJ, these are great ideas.
I also never got full size candy bars at Halloween either. Somehow as an adult this doesn’t seem as sad to me as it did as a kid 🙂
I helped my niece and nephews make ginger bread houses at Christmas, and we supplemented those kits with their Halloween candy. Not only does it look great, but the candy doesn’t get eaten — the tradition is to use fireworks on New Years to blow up the gingerbread houses!
Thanks for linking up at the Retro Re-Pin Party! See you there next week.
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These are great ideas! My 17yo was supposed to be at a sleepover but at the last moment he and his high school buddies decided to go trick-or-treating. The boy who can’t handle a lot of sugar came home with half a backpack full of candy! I’m told it was completely full. Oy vey. I’m going to show him these ideas to decide what to do with the rest. Thanks!
These are great ideas!! Love it.
[…] Out of sight, out of mind: that’s right… move it! Out of the house is preferable. Donate it, hide it, portion it out for your kids, but if you’re like me… ‘trigger’ foods are doomsville, so we typically don’t have them in the house.Halloween is hard for that, so once the day is done… it’s gone baby gone. Here’s some other tips for parents, but our #1 is the “Good Witch”. This is how it goes… kids get to keep a small portion and the rest is put out over night for the Good Witch to take! She takes it and in exchange leaves a gift for each of them Works like a charm… http://www.acookiebeforedinner.com/2013/11/leftover-halloween-candy/ […]