Easy-to-make Halloween treats

I've got some great ways to sweeten up spooky season right now. Some easy to make creepy cupcakes and other things. If you're hosting a Halloween party, if you've got the kids around, you want to get everybody involved. It really doesn't take as long as you would think. That's right. Our good friend and owner of Cakes by Happy Eatery, Victoria Wu, is here. And you are showing us from the monster eyes to all of the ooey-gooey goodness over here in chocolate. You just have it all this morning. You know what? Creepy treats. This is a fun thing. Number one, when I was doing this table, you know, when you walk up to this table, of course you're going to smell the sweets. But I also add a little bit of the dried roses. So how when you kind of walk in, there's like that mystified smell or, you know, what is this all about? I was wondering where that was coming from. Exactly. It's right there. Add to the mystery a little bit. Add to the mystery. You know, we use this sometimes in our cakes, too, when we dry it out. But that's what the decor is. So use things around the house that you have and to create something like this. So let's start with that. Before we get into some of the masterful things here, and, Makia, we're going to get to play in the dirt a little bit ourselves. and all the candy corn you can handle that's it no steve don't go there okay all right fine we'll leave that one for somebody else um one of the things that you say is if you're throwing a party don't get over obsessed with making you know going out and getting everything because you might have some things at home that you can deal with first right absolutely so things that you could do easily it's something like this one the mocha cookie crumble okay so it's a fun decor and it's tiramisu so you can always take oreo cookies and crush it up take some mascarpone and add some really good espresso to it to give it that flavor and then start layering it like this and that's what you're doing we're just layering this is a no this is a no bake dessert and then what you can do is you can make one that's ready to go okay let's have some okay go ahead all right and we just went through our virtual kitchen here meaning victoria's and uh and we grabbed some things like cookies and candy corn so if we have like an rip cookie well we added the rip to it this is one of those milano cookies and then what you could do is take an edible ink and write different things on there we put it in here it looks like a little headstone it looks like a headstone we have rest in peace then we also have some fun ones so something like this over here i'm a goner there you go these are names and then we have little gummy worms that we can put out here we could throw other food if we want a fun way to use the candy as accents too exactly go raid your candy you know closet right through there and just for makia i'm gonna bury a candy corn because she loves it so much for the record you're not gonna find that one until you take a bite it's just the number one fan of all things candy corn absolutely you indulge we could throw them all on there we could uh you've got m&ms you got pumpkins okay so you could use that And while you're doing that, with that decoration, then we also did some cake pops over there. These are awesome. So we're watching you. There's a lot of eyeballs watching you. How do you make a cake pop? Okay, so what you do is you make a cupcake. Okay. And then afterwards, add a little bit of buttercream to that cake, and then start rolling it. So it's like a nice ball, so it holds together. Okay. So you're making it as if you were making the cupcakes. Yes, you are. Okay, and then you add a little bit. You said the buttercream. The buttercream. The buttercream inside, so then that way it holds. So when you're rolling it, it will stick together. So you roll it, and then you bake it first, and then dip it? No, no, it's all baked. Oh, it's all baked. It's all baked. So you're baking your cupcakes. So you have, whether you have red velvet, chocolate, vanilla. The cake is done. The cake is done. Just put the cake in a bowl, add a little bit of buttercream to it, and then start rolling it into a ball, and just let it harden for just a moment. Do you mush the cake up? When you use your hands, you're good enough. Don't put it in a blender. That's too much. And then we just have, we did a white chocolate on here. We diluted it, and then what did we use for the eyes? And what we did was this blue chocolate and some dark chocolate to do the eyes. Oh, very cool. Okay, and then don't throw away that chocolate because you're always going to have a little bit of extra chocolate, right? Okay, what do we do? So afterwards, we're going to jump over to our spider friends right here. And then we had extra chocolate that we did the dark chocolate first. And then we took the rest of all the different colors that we were using. And then we drizzled it on here to do a colorful bark. Again, add some of your candies right on top of the chocolate. Break it apart. And we added a little cute ghost in there. and then all of a sudden you have not only when you baked your cupcake now you have a second dessert and then with the chocolate we came over with the third dessert okay let me ask you this Victoria because i'm this is not my area of expertise that's how you come to us this is a beautiful bark and you have the orange and the black here so this was just a piece of dark chocolate we melted dark chocolate okay and we put it on a sheet pan and you so that was done first though right that has to solidify that has to be the first layer okay it doesn't have to solidify all the way but it's just that's your first layer okay so where did the orange and green come from the orange and green came from when we were doing the witch's hat okay we took some chocolate and we did the witch's hat over there and then we just did some other different decorations so all you do is just take all the different colors then we also added in a little bit of savory so the pretzels goes on there you can always add the candy corn you certainly add some of the M&Ms yeah and so these are things that you can create i love it i think it's so creative even like a cute little witch's hat just like adding that that is a Hershey's Kisses the Hershey's Kiss so just make your chocolate cookie even if you want to do a chocolate chip it's fine i was gonna say is this a brownie that is a brownie cookie so all we did was we took a brownie and then we modified it put a little bit more flour in order to go into the cookies right through there these are great all right a couple other things we gotta get to, we'll get to the drinks in just a minute, yeah the spider cupcake is the star of the show but what i was asking is for the web itself, look, listen there's a method to my madness here, everything that i touch goes on this plate right here and you know why, i don't even see the plates, i'm gonna keep that for later, um these are absolutely gorgeous, there you see the top of them with the spider web, how do we do the spider web, okay so what you do is once you ice the cupcake which is ganache, which is the dark chocolate okay and then what we do is we take white chocolate and we make a circle like a swirl just do a swirl, and then afterwards take a toothpick and just section it, just like how you would do like a pie. so you're just pulling it down at each one of these layers each one, and that's how you're going to get a web right through there And then we did little fondant spiders. again, i didn't realize i did two eyes on my spider and one of my staff members was putting on these eyeballs i said, this is not, i didn't want to poke a dot he goes, no, spider has eight eyes I was like, what? But you know what? this is a very happy halloween spider I did. I did. yeah, i had a smile on that face i like that this is the creativity that we can explore with halloween so we could do, and then we also did some sugar cookies So as we had the fondant, we had the sugar. you know, you could do all different shapes and sizes So then that way it's kind of fun. And then we also had your mini cookies. So the different styles. okay And then this is a fun one, too. And then this is like a party favor, and it could be a savory or sweet snack cone in here. So we added some caramel popcorns. We added the same thing, some candy corn, some M&Ms, and just all the fun things. And then something that you can give your guests or they can just open it up and enjoy. Yeah, it's like a candy medley. And that's when at least the drinks over here. The drinks. I love all the purple. The purple pumpkin, the purple drink. The purple drink. So what we did was I did a little drink right through there. And I always love my butterfly pea flower because that's a natural coloration. and what we did with this one is we did the pineapple citrus drink okay then i had this of the tea leaves steeping since this morning so that's gonna change the color so that's gonna change the color yellow goes purple then there you go and we gotta talk about this victoria the eyeballs what are we using for eyeballs here lychee fruit okay right here lychee fruit and then lychee fruit in the middle has a stone that you take out and then i put blueberries in there for your eyeball so when you give it to your guests you can have one right there let it come here right here and you can enjoy there's your your sweets you got something to drink whether you need something a little caffeinated or not so you can enjoy everything i love it i love it i think this is a great these are all everything here is amazing i think this is fun this is good if you have kids you can get the kids involved in doing the decorating and everything else to put it all together and like you said it's no bake so it's pretty easy to put together and then everybody just scoops it out everyone scoops so sometimes you need some baked some unbaked because you know like no bake because you don't have all the oven space i mean we do i like to think with desserts it's all about balance right i have to have a little bit of this a little bit of this a little bit of this before we uh before we send it to break where do folks find you come see us at cakes by happy eatery we're storefront over in manassas all right go to manassas trust me it is worth the trip. I've done it before. It's delicious. stuff Victoria. How is it? Great. This is delicious. Yeah? How are your eyeballs? You can eat eyeballs. Okay. You can eat one of those. Dig in on that one.