Ding dong here comes Halloween!

Are you passing out candy this year to your neighborhood kids? Are you taking your own kids trick or treating? If you answered yes to one or both of those questions, odds are you will probably end up with mucho candy laying around the house. And if you're like me and your kids are too young to even eat the candy, guess who eats it instead? Right, his loving parents!

Learning from year's past of eating leftover candy mindlessly, I have come to realize that I don't even really like it that much. Sure the first few bites might taste good and are uber sweet, but the headache and gut ache afterwards are less then appetizing. So I found a few ideas of how to use left over candy- I 'upped their healthy factor' by changing a few ingredients, and adding a few of my own!

But first... Keep in mind that when you have healthy food in the house, you will eat healthier. When you have less than healthy foods lying around, you will choose those too. So choose one or two of the ideas below, take a piece or pie/ cake or a cookie for you and your family then give the rest away. Your co-workers, friends and neighbors will thank you!

Here are some tips:
* Chop up 1 handful of chocolate candies and mix into a half-gallon of softened low- fat ice cream or fat free frozen yogurt. Pour into a prepared pie shell and freeze into an ice-cream pie. You can garnish it with low-fat whipped topping and more of the chopped up chocolate candy pieces.

* Make ice cream and candy parfaits. Start by layering slices of angel food cake with vanilla yogurt or sorbet and whipped cream. Then, simply add leftover candy pieces.

* Chop up leftover candy bars and mix them into boxed cake mixes to send to work or to give to a friend for his/her birthday.

* Break up chocolate bars and use them in place of chocolate chips in your standard chocolate-chip cookie recipe. Take them over to your neighbors for a surprise treat!

* Gather all your leftover hard candies (Life Savers, Jolly Ranchers work best) and add to your favorite sugar cookie recipe. During baking they'll melt and create a stained-glass effect.

Happy baking and sharing!