Halloween Candy Muddy Buddies

Last week, our Trick or Treat night was moved to Friday night. We’ve been having some crazy rain lately, so they wanted to allow the families to enjoy Halloween with nicer weather (which Friday night was forecasted to be rain-free).

I had some grand plans of sitting out on the patio, and giving the neighborhood kids fun little treats. However, by the time the work week was over, and I had fought crazy Friday afternoon traffic, I was pretty much done. We picked up dinner, and turned off the front porch lights. LOL.

So, needless to say…leftover Halloween candy is a biggie this year in our house. I’m probably going to throw quite a bit of the chocolate in brownies for our coworkers (as usual), but I also thought that chopping it up and adding it to a batch of muddy buddies would be an easy way to get the leftover candy out of our house.

I’m surprised that I’ve never shared muddy buddies with y’all before. They’re a great, simple party food/snack, and each batch makes a LOT. With the addition of leftover Halloween candy, this batch filled up a huge party bowl, and almost all of it was gone by the end of the day. 🙂

Halloween Candy Muddy Buddies
Source: mildly adapted from Chex

Ingredients:

• 9 cups of Chex cereal (rice, corn, and/or chocolate)
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1-2 cups of chocolate candy, chopped

Directions:

1. Place the cereal in a large bowl and set aside. Line a baking sheet with wax or parchment paper and set aside.
2. In a microwave-safe medium-sized bowl, add the chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter. Microwave the mixture for 1 minute on high. Stir the mixture well, until smooth. If you need to heat up the mixture more, microwave the mixture for 30 more seconds and stir (repeat if necessary). Stir in the vanilla extract.
3. Pour the chocolate/peanut butter mixture over the cereal, as well as the chopped chocolate candies, and gently stir until the cereal is evenly coated in the mixture. Add the mixture evenly to two 1-gallon plastic resealable food-storage bags.
4. Add half of the confectioners sugar to each bag, and seal each bag well. Shake each bag until the mixtures in each bag are well-coated.
5. Spread the muddy buddies evenly onto the baking sheet, and allow the mixture to cool. Store in an airtight container in the fridge, until you are ready to serve. Enjoy!