Oh sure, Halloween means the kids are out shleppin’ a bag full of candy and bribing their neighbors for treats, but one of the things I LOVE about Halloween is that it begins the holiday baking season for me! And it’s starts with hauling out all of the assorted Halloween related kitchen gadgets.

I love the smells of the various spices baking and the colors and creativity are… both literally and figuratively… the icing on the cake!

Even though these Halloween gadgets are used only for a limited time each year, they give us a great opportunity to invite friends over for a festive gathering just to celebrate the season.

Ready for those pumpkin pancakes shaped like a pumpkin?  Sure, we won’t want to give up our bowl of Frankenberries every day but it can be a lot of fun to surprise the kids with some ghoulish cakes covered in strawberry ‘blood’ Keep in mind, you can also use these molds as cookie cutters for some great oversized cookies. I’ve even used them as templates on cake frosting; if you’re using colored sprinkles it’s nice to have the edges of the mold give you nice crisp edges to create exactly the image you desire on your cake.

How about some ghostly cupcakes? A favorite at my house is ghost shaped cupcakes covered with that sticky, gooey, marshmallow-like frosting so you can make them look truly windblown!

It seems like we all get the most creative with decorating sugar cookies. I’ve always had a particular passion for cookie cutters because you can find so many shapes and sizes and they’re usually so inexpensive that I can buy them for the clay/playdough box as well as the kitchen cabinet. You can’t have too many but you can have better ones. The metal cutters make the best cutters but they don’t give the design options found in many of the plastic cutters. If you shop for plastic ones make sure that the cutting edge is fine enough to give a good cut and if they are the kind designed to leave impressions make sure those inner lines are almost at the same depth as the cutting edge. And always dip them into flour before each cut!

Enjoy your Halloween Gadgets!