Garbage Pail Pumpkins

In honor of Halloween I have come up with the Garbage Pail Pumpkins.  For those of you from my generation the Garbage pail kids will ring familiar. I didn’t want the typical pretty pumpkins, I wanted texture and fun… so I came up with this little guy.  They are fun and easy to make, and best of all, egg free, dairy free, and gluten free!!! Even I can eat this guy without getting a headache. These are even fun for the kids to make. 

Once you have the whole mix together, you’ll want to stick a pretzel rod in the middle, wrap the orange ball into wax paper and stick it in the freezer or fridge for a few hours.  Once the mass is firm you’ll gently pull away the wax paper and use frosting to decorate.  I made my frosting from scratch so I could flavor it with cocoa.

Frankenpumpkin, Typical Pumpkin, Happy Pumpkin

What you will need:

4 cups of corn cereal, 1 bag of dairy / egg free marshmallows, orange food dye, 3 tbs of country crock (off brand, I use food lion because it doesn’t have dairy, country crock actually has dairy in it).

Melt the off brand of country crock, add the bag of marshmallows’ when the cc has melted, stir in the orange food dye while the marshmallows are melting, once your marshmallows are smooth you can add in the corn cereal. Mix well. Once everything is orange, move your mix to wax paper, round the mix in the wax paper into a ball then stick the pretzel stick in the middle. You’ll want to tie the wax paper around the stick so it stays in a ball form.  This mix will make 3 nice sized oranges.

Once you are ready to decorate your pumpkin, take the wax paper off carefully (you will only want to take one pumpkin out at a time), I used the edge of a knife to slowly remove the paper. 

To make your own icing, use 1 cup powdered sugar, ¼ cup shortening, 1 tbs of corn syrup, 1 tbs vanilla, and two tbs cocoa and black food dye. Mix for five minutes.