Caramel Apple Bites

This recipe is from Taste of Home magazine. If you don't subscribe to it, you should! It's an awesome food/cooking magazine my mom got me hooked on a few years ago. ( Which reminds me, I need to renew my subscription!) If you know me, you know I LOVE anything with nuts. It's a fun recipe that's a little more eater-friendly than carameled apples.

Ingredients:

FILLING:
1/3 cup chopped unpeeled apple
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup chopped walnuts

DOUGH:
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour

TOPPING:
1 package (14 ounces) caramels
2/3 cup evaporated milk
Green toothpicks
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions: In a small saucepan, combine filling ingredients. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened; set aside to cool. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add egg, vanilla and salt; beat well. Add flour; mix well. Shape dough into 1-in. balls. Flatten and place 1/4 teaspoon filling in center of each. Fold dough over filling and reshape into balls. Place 1 in. apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. In a saucepan over low heat, cook caramels are melted. Insert a toothpick into each cookie and dip into caramel until completely coated. Dip bottoms into nuts. Place on wire racks to set. Yield: about 3 dozen.

Ghosts in the Graveyard

I made a recipe in Taste of Home for this, but found the picture and a similar recipe on KraftFoods. The only difference is cream cheese. I like it with cream cheese, which does make it kinda rich, but without is good too, it's light and fluffy! So, take your pick! It's pretty easy and feeds about 13 people...and it's yummy.

3 cups cold milk
2 pkg. (4-serving size each) Chocolate Instant Pudding
1 tub (12 oz.) Whipped Topping, thawed, divided
15 OREO Cookies, crushed

8 oz. cream cheese *if you want

**Assorted decorations: Either Cameo Creme Sandwich Cookies or Nutter Butters or a cookie tall and thin resembling a tombstone! Decorating gel, candy pumpkins, pieces of candy corn, and I like to put on gummy worms!

For cream cheese- In a bowl whip cream cheese until smooth. In another bowl mix up pudding and when set, add whipped topping and pudding in small amounts at a time to cream cheese until smooth, scraping sides of bowl.

Otherwise, POUR milk into large bowl. Add dry pudding mixes. Beat with wire whisk 2 min. or until well blended. Let stand 5 min. Gently stir in 3 cups of the whipped topping and half of the cookie crumbs. Spread evenly into 13x9-inch baking dish; sprinkle with the remaining cookie crumbs.
REFRIGERATE at least 1 hour. Meanwhile, decorate creme sandwich cookies with decorating gel to resemble tombstones. Set aside until ready to use.
INSERT decorated cookies into top of dessert just before serving. Add candies. Drop large spoonfuls of the remaining whipped topping onto dessert to resemble ghosts. Cover and store leftover dessert in refrigerator.

Spider Cake

I found this picture, and it is the closest I could come to what my cake looks like. I like how they used cupcakes on the side of the cake. Cute touch for kiddies.

My recipe is pretty darn easy. Just make two 8 or 9 inch round chocolate cakes and let them cool. Meanwhile, mix pistachio pudding according to the pie directions on the box and chill in the fridge. Once the cakes are cooled, Put one cake on your serving dish and cut out a 4 inch round piece out of the middle of the cake. You can use this piece for a spider head if you want. Take your pudding and put that in the hole. Cover with chocolate frosting and then add the top cake. Frost like you would a normal cake and then decorate it however you want. I like twizzlers for legs, m&m's for eyes, etc. The cool part is when people cut into it, the pudding comes gushing out like the spider's guts. It is pretty awesome. You could do the same thing in cupcakes, just cut out the middle after they are cooled and then put the middle back in, frost, and decorate.