Stock Up: 3 things you need for Halloween or Day of the Dead

If someone you love doesn’t live close enough to come trick or treat at your door, send them the Halloween Boo Box from Pennsylvania-based Sugar Plum Chocolates. Inside are milk chocolate-covered pretzels, cookies and graham crackers with Halloween-colored sprinkles or drizzles of colored white chocolate. They’ll also enjoy dark and white chocolate caramel corn, a white chocolate ghost lollipop, gummy spiders and peach hard candy (appropriately colored for the season). Everything comes carefully packaged, so it arrives in great shape, and the 18 items in the box will cover fans of sweet or salty, with plenty to share.

$49 per box. Available at sugar-plum.com/products/halloween-boo-box.

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

Halloween cookbook for kids

If you’re looking for a Halloween-themed cookbook, “The Unofficial Hocus Pocus Cookbook for Kids” by Bridget Thoreson (Bloom Books for Young Readers) offers 50 quick recipes for everything from breakfast (good zombie toast) to dead man’s toes (hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls with mustard “toe nails”). The recipes are easy, the illustrations are fun and there’s even a little “witchcraft,” as young cooks learn how to turn sugar syrup and food coloring into colored rock crystal candy.

$17.95. Available at local and online bookstores, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. ulyssespress.com/books/the-unofficial-hocus-pocus-cookbook

Mini skull cake pan

In addition to its regular line of skillets, Dutch ovens, griddles and more, Lodge Cast Iron in Tennessee produces specialty items, such as this cake pan that makes six skull-shaped mini cakes for the Day of the Dead or Halloween. The pan comes seasoned, so your cakes will release quickly, without losing any of the detail. The website has a recipe for spiced Mexican chocolate cake skulls (flavored with vanilla, chili powder, coffee and cinnamon) and detailed pictures of colorful, whimsical decorations. If you want to go all in, there also are cast iron sugar skull skillets and griddles.

$34.95 per cake pan. Available at Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair and lodgecastiron.com/product/skull-mini-cake-pan?sku=BWSKULL.

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