5 Must-Make Martha Stewart Treats to Bake this Halloween

Halloween gives East Enders the chance to shamelessly cheat on our diets with candy corn, fun size candy and sweets of every sort. It’s your duty as a parent to spare your kids the unnecessary sugar after all. *wink* Even if you don’t have small children, the spooky holiday offers the perfect opportunity to throw a festive party with plenty of scary treats to go around. And who better to consult for ideas than East Hampton homemaker extraordinaire Martha Stewart?

Here are five of our favorite ghoulish Martha Stewart recipes to bake this Halloween:

Creepcakes are a fun, easy-to-make treat for any kids Halloween party, and can even be given out to trick-or-treaters, although it’s probably a good idea to save these premier sweets for neighbors you actually know and like, as they do take about 90 minutes to prepare. They look adorably creepy covered in bright frosting and all sorts of candy.

To start, head to your local Stop and Shop—or the new ShopRite of Riverhead—and buy your basic cupcake and frosting ingredients. Then stock up on sweets to create your tasty creatures! Marshmallows make great eyes and teeth; Airheads work as tongues and tentacles; and licorice can be used for scars, spider legs and reptilian pupils. Watch Stewart demonstrate a few designs in the video, and then check out the full guide.

If you don’t want your kids eating pure sugar this Halloween, offer them some Scary Pear Heads instead. All you need to do is coat the Seckel pear pops in melted white chocolate, and then apply dark chocolate detailing after cooling. Simple, right? The whole process only takes one hour to prepare eight pirate-y pops. Watch Stewart prepare them in the video below, or read the full recipe.

This one’s a bit more complicated. This gorgeous Raven’s Nest Cake takes nearly four hours to make, but it’s guaranteed to wow your dinner guests and leave them talking about your baking skills through Thanksgiving. The cake is made with cocoa powder, safflower oil and the usual stuff and topped with buttercream frosting. The nest is created using chocolate chilled in vodka, and the bird…is unfortunately inedible. Watch Martha Stewart Living Assistant Food Editor Lindsay Strand demonstrate below or read the full recipe.

After the Raven’s Nest Cake, any recipe would seem like a piece of cake, but this one really is super simple. Making Crisp Candy-Corn Treats can be a fun family activity, with only a few added steps to the timeless, homemade Rice Crispy Treat recipe. The obvious difference is the color, so you know you’ll need yellow and red food dye, but if you really want these to blow your family’s collective mind, add some unexpected flavor to the mix, with some lemon and orange zest. In the video, Martha Stewart Living Editorial Food Director Sarah Carey leads you through the 130-minute process, which yields 20 treats, but if you prefer to read along, check out the full recipe.

Carey guides bakers through a second recipe with the “I Scream” Graveyard Pie. After stocking up on Halloween candy, set some fun size Butterfingers and Mounds aside to mix into this delicious ice cream pie with graham cracker crust. Of course, it wouldn’t be festive enough without a few Milano cookie tombstones with candy skulls. This one takes about 75 minutes to complete and serves eight. Watch the step-by-step tutorial video below or take a look at the recipe.