There's a certain amount of pleasure I take in Halloween, the free pass to eat all kinds of candy.  From the mini peanut butter cups to the black and orange Oreo cookies, there are many delicacies at Halloween that all revolve around a lot of sugar.

When I was a kid, eating Halloween candy was about as good as it gets.  All that forbidden stuff that we emptied on the floor, sorting out the very healthy (but undesirable at that age) boxes of raisins, the red delicious apples, the little sacks of peanuts in the shell --- those were put aside in favor of the big candy bars, the whopper-sized bubble gum, the gummi bears and the sticky lollipops.  So much simple pleasure...and so much sugar!

I try to abstain from being candy-obsessed on October 31, and dutifully buy bags of candy that I don't particularly care for, so I don't eat it before the trick-or-treaters do.  However, I usually mix up a batch of pumpkin-based cookies with a penuche frosting that satisfies the sweet craving.  I'm finishing off a loaf of pumpkin bread, so spicy and evocative of the season.  Once November 1 rolls around, it will all be about toasting delicious pumpkin seeds, and wishing I had more of them.

However, how sweet is too sweet?  That's the question I hope to answer when I prepare a recipe I saw on a blog recently:  candycorn topped nanaimo bars.  Nanaimo bars are three layers of lusciousness:  a chocolate-coconut base, a middle filling made with vanilla pudding and powdered sugar, topped with rich dark chocolate mixed into a ganache delight.  The recipe I plan to try in a few days substitutes melted candycorn for the topping.  You mix it with powdered sugar and a few other things, and refrigerate till firm. 

Does that sound so sweet it makes your fillings hurt?  I have had very few treats in my life that qualify as too sweet.  I'll let you know if this is one of them!