Spiffy Treats for Your Autumn Guests

Serving snacks for guest in the Autumn is fun and you get to be creative. One of my favorites is mixing a bowl of peanuts (salted is better but can be unsalted) and candy corn together in a dish. This taste just like a Payday candy bar. You'll surprise your guest when they taste this.

Another cool fall recipe is to serve apples with caramel dipping sauce, bought from the store. But to add your own little twist, before you micro-wave the caramel add some crunchy peanut butter in it. Then it makes it taste like caramel apples with nuts on it. The same sauce can be used on bananas.

Quick and easy recipe for Halloween dirt pudding:

one package of Oreos - the Halloween Oreos work great for this recipe
two packages of French vanilla pudding
two small cartons of cool whip free (the free tastes exactly the same with none of the calories!)
and enough milk to make the pudding

Make the pudding like the package says, mix in the cool whip (easiest to do if it is already thawed) add orange (red and yellow) food coloring to desired shade of orange.
Then crush all the oreos by putting them in a ziplock bag and hitting them with the back of a spoon, or any kitchen object, one that wont penetrate the bag.
Put half the cookies in the bottom of you pan, pour on the pudding mixture, then put the rest of the cookies on top
It is best if it sits for a few hours, but you can eat it right away.

Another snack you could include is store bought sugar cookies (or the kind you break off and bake) plus vanilla and chocolate pre-made icing (like Pillsbury) add orange food coloring to the vanilla, put the icing on the cookies and you have Halloween colored cookies. For thanksgiving do the same thing but use red, orange, and yellow food colorings. If you mix a little vanilla icing with the chocolate the color will turn brown . Now you have Thanksgiving festive cookies!

If you want to get really creative with your cookies, buy some autumn colored sprinkles! This is a great way to get the kids involved. Make cookie decorating part of every holiday tradition. It creates great memories and is something you can your children can do together. Suprise the kids by getting those plastic spider rings to put on each cookie! Pretty nifty, they are decorations and make a great little Halloween toy.