Sweet and Crunchy: Candied Yam Rice Krispie Treats Recipe for Serious Eats

It's time to combine two marvelous marshmallow-based recipes to form one delicious treat: the Candied Yam Rice Krispies Treat.

What's not to love about this seasonal mashup? Separately, both cereal treats and candied yam casseroles are delicious; both dishes rely on marshmallows for their sweet, signature taste. But the key to this combination is their contrasting crispy textures; when they come together, you're rewarded with a crispy-creamy-moist-and-chewy sort of marshmallow nirvana, sweetly spiced and perfect with hot chocolate or chai tea.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Trick or Sweet: Fun-Size Candy Bar Studded Cheesecake Recipe for Serious Eats

What's so "fun" about Fun-Size candy bars, anyway? Those paltry portions taste like deprivation to me—unless we're talking about eating five or six, all at once. But I digress.

For a sweet treat that embraces the excessive sweetness of the Halloween spirit but also takes advantage of surplus candy (or the cheap prices of Halloween candy the day after), try your hand at this Fun-Size Candy Studded Cheesecake. A rich and creamy cheesecake gets a chocolatey upgrade from coarsely chopped candy in a variety of your choosing. Lucky enough to have extra Snickers bars? Go for it, or make it a mix; mine included a melange of Nestle favorites, including about 15 assorted mini Nestle Crunch, Baby Ruth, and Butterfinger bars. One thing's for sure: the size of this cake makes for mega-fun.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Bake a Cake In It: Cake Baked in a Pumpkin Recipe for Serious Eats

It's been proven time and time again that stuff is better when it's baked inside of a cake. For example: cupcake-stuffed cupcakes, truffle-stuffed cupcakes, the entire website Bake it in a Cake.

But what happens when you do the reverse, and bake a cake inside something unexpected? Like a pumpkin?

The original idea here was to make mini cakes in cored-out small pumpkins, but the baking was irregular; baking a batch of cake in one large pumpkin yielded a far more delicious (and good-looking) result.

The moisture of the pumpkin yields a cake that had a texture something like a baked pudding—very dense and flavorful. To keep things from getting too pumpkin-heavy I tried this recipe with carrot cake; the flavors and spices worked beautifully with the pumpkin scent and flavor. It's even better when generously frosted and served with ice cream.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Smear Campaign: Smearcase Recipe for Serious Eats

If you ask me, a baked good had better be great to get away with an exceedingly unappetizing name like Smearcase.

And happily, it is—this little-known Baltimore specialty, introduced to me by Rachel Rappaport of Coconut & Lime, is sort of like a thinner-crusted cousin to the pride of St. Louis known as Gooey Butter Cake. A dense, cakey crust encases a big ol' smear of gooey cream cheese-based custard filling; when sliced into squares, it's sort of like cheesecake condensed into a bar cookie form.

Note: While not strictly traditional, I added a handful of lightly roasted walnuts to the top of my Smearcase, with delicious results.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Creepy Cute: Zombie Graveyard Cake Recipe for Serious Eats

Zombies don't eat cake—they eat people's brains. But this Halloween, here's a way to turn the tables: Zombie Graveyard Cake.

This is just about the tastiest graveyard you'll ever come across. Starting with a generous amount of grass green-tinted frosting, the cake is then lined with cookie crumbles to resemble the residual grave-escape dirt, dotted with cookie "graves", and decorated with zombie cutout cake picks (printable illustrations to cut out can be found here) to form a delightful dessert that is creepy and cute all at once.

For the full entry, visit Serious Eats!

Pop and Corn: Candy Corn Popcorn Balls Recipe for Serious Eats

Legend has it that Candy Corn is named for its coloring, which is inspired by the gradient of a kernel of corn. Sweet as this story may be, I've got to squint really hard to see the resemblance.

Nonetheless, I'm happy to bring the iconic tricolor treat together with popped kernels of its namesake, in the form of Candy Corn Popcorn Balls. These sweet marshmallow-based popcorn balls work beautifully when studded with candy corn; adding an extra shake of salt makes for a sweet, salty, crunchy, crispy, sticky, and overall pretty irresistible fall treat.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Trick or Sweet: Mellowcreme Pumpkin Shaped Cake Recipe for Serious Eats

Candy corn may be popular, come Halloween. But I, for one, think that its cousin, the Mellowcreme Pumpkin, deserves far more love and attention. Its larger surface area makes for a chewier-textured candy, and its pumpkin shape is just so cute.

And so I'm putting these pumpkins on a pedestal—literally—in a full-sized cake form tribute to the Mellowcreme Pumpkin. The look may not be exact, but I hope you'll forgive me when you taste it: made using a pumpkin cake generously coated in tinted cream cheese frosting, this is a highly delicious homage to a second-banana Halloween sweet.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Teatime Treats: Sprinkle Cakewiches Recipe for Serious Eats

Time for High Tea? More like high time to give tea sandwiches a totally sweet makeover, with these slim and dainty but devilishly decadent frosting-filled Sprinkle Cakewiches.

I got this idea from the newly-published Scanwiches by Jon Chonko, wherein all manner of sandwiches are chronicled in a sort of art-meets-sandwich anthropology sort of way. Under the Tea Sandwich listing, there is a fascinating sprinkle-and-frosting-filled variation; naturally, I knew I had to try out my own version. I decided to take it one step further into dessert territory by swapping out the crustless white bread with thin slices of poundcake--and, because why not, I used chocolate poundcake paired with pink frosting and pastel sprinkles. The whimsical nature of the sandwiches would be charming for a child's tea party, but the tastiness is appropriate for all ages.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Stuff It: Nutella Stuffed Shortbread for Serious Eats

It's a fact: stuff is better when it's stuffed with stuff.

Instead of trying to say that five times fast, go ahead and preheat your ovens, because you'll want to make time move faster in an effort to get these cookies in your mouth sooner. Because if there's anything better than a deliciously crumbly shortbread cookie, it's one that is stuffed with rich, creamy, chocolate-and-hazelnut-laden Nutella.

I'm tempted to deem these the perfect lunchbox treat for back-to-schoolers, but really they're the ideal mid-day pick me up for anyone.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Taste the Rainbow: Rainbow Cake for Serious Eats

Want a cake that will turn any frown upside down? Well, you've got it—with magic to spare—in this Rainbow Layer Cake.

A six-layer cake in all the colors of the rainbow, this one is dramatic to cut into and always seems to elicit an "oooooooh" response. It is impossible to be unhappy while eating this cake. Special thanks go to Karen of the blog, off the (meat)hook, whose pictures of a similar cake inspired me to create this recipe.

Of course, the recipe is from my upcoming book .

Read the full entry at Serious Eats!