Too Many Cooks: What's Your Favorite Halloween Candy?

You'll be hearing from the staff at FOOD52 every week in Too Many Cooks, our group column in which we pool our answers to questions about food, cooking, life, and more.

You'll forgive us, I hope, if we're a little hyper today. You see, with Halloween weekend coming up, we've all got phantom sugar highs from the memory of candy bars past.

Today we head to the candy aisle to answer the question: What's your favorite Halloween candy? Bring on the Twix bars, the Warheads, and the Nerds! There'll be time for homemade caramel apples all fall.

 

Amanda
I liked Smarties when I was a kid, but I never really ate my Halloween candy. Just saved it and occasionally let one of my siblings, who had run through their stash, have a piece. Now, from our Brooklyn stoop, we hand out mini peanut butter cups.

 

Nozlee
Tiny Reese's peanut butter cups, because their chocolate-to-peanut butter ratio is far superior to the regularly-sized original. Also: candy corn, and the weirdly-gross-but-good candy pumpkins! Oh, and Smarties -- so chalky and powdery, yet great!

Kenzi
Baby Reese's, to second Nozlee. (Because you get to eat so many more of them!)

Merrill
I have to third the mini Reese's.

Gheanna
Reese's baby peanut butter cups all the way.

Karl
Reese's peanut butter cups and Kit Kats. And I forgot about the all sugar category: Nerds! Pixie sticks!

 

Jennifer
I love mini Butterfinger bars!

Marian
My favorite is Take 5. It contains every good candy ingredient.

Brette
My favorite candies are Milky Way Midnights, frozen. But the best of all sugar candy is the Nerds Rope.

Kristen
Surprise favorite, just discovered this year -- frozen Baby Ruths. Who knew they weren't weird and full of nougat? All caramel & peanuts.

Christina
ET's fav is also mine -- Reese's Pieces!

Amanda Li
M&Ms and Snickers. And you can't forget Sour Patch Kids!

 

Lindsay-Jean
Candy corn. A gelatin-free variety (why do so many items have gelatin that don't need it?! It's enough to drive a candy-loving vegetarian batty!), preferably mixed with peanuts. And if we're going with multiples, I have to add in Dots!

Peter
For decades the go-to was 3 Musketeers. Now I have 2 favorites -- one chocolate, one sugar. For chocolate it's the rare and very under-appreciated Take 5. For all-sugar I've come around to the ever-present SweeTarts (SweetTarts? Sweet Tarts?).

Michael
Not sure if they still make them, but Cookies 'n' Creme [sic] Hershey's nuggets were a huge favorite of mine during my Halloween heyday.

 

Veronica
Now and Laters! It's always a dental dilemma though, because they seem to permanently stick to your molars.

Maddy
Frozen Twix and Butterfinger minis!

 

Stephanie
Kit-kat or Wunderbar are my faves. You guys are really missing out on the Wunderbar. It's chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter all made into gooey and crispy goodness.

Molly
I love the big squared Tootsie Rolls in the funny cardboard "buns."