How To Use Leftover Candy To Elevate Store-Bought Cupcakes In A Pinch

Warning: We're about to enter peak leftover candy season. From Halloween to that nebulous week between Christmas and New Year's Day, nearly every environment you occupy will be stocked with a glut of sweets: the office break area, social gatherings galore, your own home. You could make quick work of that personal stock through binging or purging — by gullet or garbage can, your choice. But there's a better way to repurpose excess candy, particularly as we get deeper into the holidays: Use those confections to zhuzh up store-bought cupcakes the next time you're tasked with bringing dessert to an event.

No matter how busy life gets during the final three months of the year, sometimes you simply can't show up to the party empty-handed. For a low-effort solution, turn to the hero of the supermarket bakery, cupcakes, which can easily be disguised as a homemade labor of love. Typically, the giveaway that they didn't come from your oven (besides the packaging) is icing that's piped on too perfectly and too uniformly. Give the toppings a slightly more rustic appearance by chopping or crushing leftover candy and then using it as the finishing layer.

Consult your sweets surplus, which should point you to the optimal flavor of cake and frosting to buy at the store. If you've got too many Fun Size Snickers, Twix, or Reese's, embrace the chocolate-caramel-peanut-butter combo and go with a cupcake that's got both a chocolate base and a chocolate airy crown, dicing the candy into Dairy Queen Blizzard-like bits and showering them on top. Anything toffee — Almond Roca, Heath bars, Werther's Original — would pair well with a fairly neutral and light foundation like a white or yellow cake with a swoop of white frosting. In December, when all things peppermint appear on store shelves, the bracing flavor of a candy cane will temper the richness of a chocolate cupcake — shatter the sticks into small shards and make it snow.

If you still haven't worked your way through your candy supply after the holidays, we've got nearly two dozen other ideas on how to repurpose those treats, including adding them to trail mix to create a salty-sweet grab bag, or infusing vodka with Jolly Ranchers for a new take on fruity-sweet cocktails. If you're in the mood for baking, we've also got a rundown on Halloween candy-studded trash brownies. Finally, Food Network chef Jeff Mauro gave us his recipe for Candy Bucket Cookies, which he called his "favorite cookie of the year" in 2022. Though donating that haul to a good cause might actually be the sweetest option.