Halloween Candy Problem Solved

(I am relinking this post since the original was somehow connected to a Japanese spammer...random, I know!)

Hope your Halloween weekend was a good one. We did our trick or treating early on Thursday night, and despite R and G being off-the-hook excited about our candy mission for the night, this was the best picture of them smiling together:
So, now what to do with all this candy:
I was brainstorming over the weekend, trying to figure out how to curb the candy overload. Last year, we did a "one or two pieces" a day quota and the candy lasted well into the New Year. So this year I put on my thinking cap and have come up with this idea...

...and it worked like a charm...

I told R and G that I needed to make a special dessert for our dinner Sunday night (true story). I explained that I was going to make a special cake and I needed some of their chocolate candy to make the (cheese)cake. They got really excited and started handing me their candy for the cake. This is all the chocolate R willingly gave up for the effort:

I used three snack size candy bars--a Kit Kat, Reese's Cup and Snickers Bar--for the filling of this cheesecake. The rest of the candy went into the "take your candy to work day" bag for SPH.

I used two more snack size Reese's Cups for the topping, and let the boys throw a couple M&Ms on top for good measure.

All in all, it was a very easy, very yummy way to rid our house of some candy without any protesting.

Halloween Candy Cheesecake

Crust:
3 cups Cheerios
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Filling:
3 - 8 oz light cream cheese, softened
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
gobs and gobs of candy (ok, only really 5 snack size chocolate bars, but you can tell your kids you need gobs)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, process the Cheerios and brown sugar until fine. Add the oil and vanilla, and process until fine and resembling cornmeal.

Press Cheerio mixture into the bottom and up 1/2 way on the sides of a springform pan (alternatively, you can use a pie pan). Bake for 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix the cream cheese and add one egg at a time, scraping the sides between eggs to ensure good mixing. Add the sugar, vanilla and flour, and mix until fully incorporated.

Take 3 snack size candy bars (Kit Kat, Reese's Cup, Snickers, Heath Bar, etc work well) and crumble.

Increase oven temperature to 365 degrees. Pour half of the cream cheese mixture into the pan with the crust. Sprinkle with candy. Cover with the other half of the cream cheese mixture.

Bake for 35-38 minutes or until the middle of the cheesecake is no longer jiggly. Cool and let firm in a refrigerator 8 hours or overnight before serving.

When ready to serve, crumble 2 or 3 more snack size bars on top of the cheesecake.



Serves 12.

*An idea I thought of after I already had the cake in the oven was that you could do something fun and take a certain color M&M and place it inside the cake and see who gets the slice with that special color M&M. Maybe they could even win a prize. Like having to do the dishes. :)
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