After Halloween, there’s a ton of spilled candy corn everywhere. In pantries, cabinets, behind the fridge…yep. I wind up finding candy corn wedged into small spaces way after it’s out of season. How to deal with this?

Use it, fast! And the best way to transition from one holiday to the next is to use candy corn in these adorable chocolate ganache cupcakes. With an Oreo turkey on top, nobody can resist! Look at their little faces.

I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for pie-baking craziness and my mind is going a million miles an hour because I have endless ideas about what to bake this year. There are so many different options for pie out there, but our Thanksgiving table can only accommodate about five pies before things start to look really excessive.

In general, Thanksgiving is an easy holiday. It’s basically a menu with some preset factors (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie) and room for lots of additions and creativity. I love to cook while watching the Macy’s parade on TV. If you get up at a decent hour and cook through the morning, that’s pretty much all the time you need for the main dishes and sides.

If you think I’m in the wrong here, that’s okay. I’m just saying that effort-wise, I find Thanksgiving to be on the lower maintenance end, though not quite so much as July 4th. And you can make dessert ahead of time, which is even more of a bonus. I have two pies already in the freezer and November just started. We’re making good time here!

Plus, once the meal starts, it’s nice just to sit back and have a glass of wine and enjoy. Or if you’re me, to take that glass of wine to the kitchen and pick at the turkey carcass. Sorry. I’m a scavenger, and it’s one of my favorite things to do on Thanksgiving.

In honor of what is definitely one of my favorite holidays, I also get crafty with the food. These cupcakes are a cute and easy addition to any Thanksgiving dessert spread. When my own kids saw these, their eyes lit up and they all wanted one right now. My daughter always tends to want things (insert demanding tone here) right now.

These are a fairly simple chocolate cupcake (but you can use a mix if you like to save time) with a quick ganache topping. The most time-consuming part of this is making the little turkeys. Those candy corn feathers really want to fall out of the top. I found myself working hard to make sure each one wound up with four feathers. If I were less anal-retentive, I would have let my kids make these with me. Mine are a little young, but older kids can definitely help out here.

Once these are atop your cupcakes, it’s open season on Thanksgiving celebrations. The best part of the holiday is coming together over food that people prepare with lots of love. Why not start the celebration a little early this year?

If you’ve ever taken a crumb cake and eaten the top off, these bars are for you. Made with pumpkin spice peanut butter (thank you, Jif!), these are so light that they crumble at the slightest touch. It might not make for the neatest edges, but these guys make quite the party in your mouth.

And of course, I had to add in candy corn. Who doesn’t love candy corn? As my friend Dorothy points out, when peanut butter and candy corn are put together, they taste like a Payday bar. And with that pumpkin spice twist, the hint of cinnamon is just…yep. Major win here, guys.

What I’m far less excited about is the prospect of Hurricane Joaquin. It’s barreling toward the east coast, and if it tracks inland, we’re looking at a probability of days with no power. If my blog goes inactive, you’ll know why.

Power outages are really the pits. When I was a kid, we lost power for several hours at a time during bad storms, but never for days. A few years ago, when my youngest was just a baby, we had a brief but intense storm here known as a “derecho” (no idea that was even a thing, trust me) that knocked power out for a week. A week. It was early July, and we sweated it out, trying to keep our kids comfortable and hydrated. It was hard to drive anywhere because the traffic lights were also knocked out. I will forever hate the power company, thanks to that week.

Another winter, snow fell heavily and once again, our power went out for a couple of days. We had no heat, so we had to bundle everyone and get the car out through the unplowed snow to a main road, where we lit out for my brother’s house. I felt like a pioneer woman, and not in a good way.

So you can fully understand that with Joaquin headed our way, I’m once again apprehensive. We’re checking batteries and flashlights, stocking up on nonperishable food and drinks, and preparing to have the children sleep with us. Have I mentioned that our house is in the middle of a forest of tall trees, and that one has actually fallen on the house? It’ll be the basement for us during this storm.

All of this advance worrying is enough to send me hurtling toward the sugar, as usual. It’s the best stress-buster. Wouldn’t you agree?

When I was single, I’d buy an Entenmann’s ultimate crumb cake on Friday afternoon for the weekend. In the morning at breakfast, I’d read the paper while picking all the crumb off the top with a fork. In other words, crumb cake exists in my world for the crumb.

So why not have a bar that has the same consistency and addictiveness? That’s exactly what is happening here. By taking the egg out of a more standard peanut butter bar recipe, these become mega crumbly. They’re hard to cut, but nobody will care. The best desserts aren’t always the prettiest.

With the pumpkin spice element added in along with candy corn, these are the perfect autumn indulgence. Eat the bars plain, or crumble them over ice cream. And if the power goes out, these will still be supremely eatable. I can’t think of a better way to prepare for a hurricane than to get baking!

But pizza leads to heartburn, and tummyaches, and vast regret. I guess that means I have to pretend to be a grown-up and not eat much of it. Well, the traditional kind. Nobody ever said anything about cookie pizza!

An autumn candy pizza, to be exact. A pumpkin cookie base covered with melted white chocolate, candy corn, white chocolate candy corn M & Ms and Hershey’s limited edition candy corn bars.

Say what? They’re making all that? Heck yeah. My candy aisle explorations have yielded a lot of fun lately. I just had to cover my cookie with as much candy as possible.

The base is Nestle brand pumpkin cookie dough, which I spread out on the bottom of a spring form pan without using the sides. So it’s a quick recipe and easy to boot, but with a nice impressiveness to it! When I brought this into my office people were way too excited about it. I didn’t bother telling them that it took very little time and effort to assemble.

As you know, I’m all about taking full advantage of the wonderful fall products on grocery shelves. This recipe is a definite winner! And may I suggest pizza for dinner…and then this pizza for dessert?

The Cronut? Sign me up. I just wish I’d thought of it first. But beware, because the Bronut (i.e., a brownie/donut mash-up) is totally mine for the taking. What can I say? It’s a dream, a glint in my eye, but it’ll happen. And the Pake? I didn’t make that one up, but who can object to pie and cake together? Or the Pookie? I love cookie and pie in the same place!

It is with this spirit of cooperation and togetherness that I bring you…drumroll, please…

The Wownie!

Yep, you heard right. It’s a white chocolate brownie. I’ve already made Wownies (see my White Chocolate Oreo Bars), but I just haven’t dubbed them until today. Well, wait no more. Consider the Wownie a named treat!

And this time, I’ve filled them with seasonal candy corn goodness. Not just candy corn itself, but Hershey candy corn bars and candy corn M & Ms (which are really just white chocolate in cool candy corn colors, but whatevs).

It’s sugar upon sugar. Sweet upon sweet. And boy, is it good! These bars have that perfect brownie consistency, but no actual chocolate. No, white chocolate is not chocolate. I love it anyway, though.

This is a one-bowl, no mixer required recipe. And if you can’t find all the candy corn stuff, just fill them with what suits you! I just couldn’t resist all the orange and yellow right now. And for those of you who are getting sick of my pumpkin/candy corn/apple phase, I am going back to form and posting a very indulgent PB and chocolate recipe Wednesday.

But for now, enjoy the Wownies! And remember: they were named here first!

I may have mentioned before that my son doesn’t like chocolate. So whenever it comes time to bake for him, life gets complicated. Because you know, he’s picky. He’s not fond of caramel either, or certain textures really get to him. But candy? Candy is always okay. And candy corn is even better! And when baked into a cookie?

Yep. Happiness!

I used the Halloween Funfetti cake mix to do these. Because really, who can resist Funfetti? The sprinkles in the mix are shaped like bats and pumpkins. That’s kind of impossible to tell, they’re so small. But that’s the idea!

In terms of the cookie dough, I used cake mix. What would better mesh with that extreme sweetness of candy corn than a good cake batter taste? They were the perfect combination. I really couldn’t stop eating these, but more importantly, neither could my son.

It was a good half birthday! Mine’s on Valentine’s Day. Feel free to bake me some cookies then, too!