This indulgent dessert is easy to put together and incredibly delicious. It’s perfect for serving as an alternative for pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving or throwing together to tote to a last-minute party or work function. Once you taste the spicy, creamy flavor with a hint of citrus, we guarantee this will become a go-to fall/winter dessert.

Ukrop’s Gingerbread Topped with Cream Cheese Frosting and Lemon Sauce
Serves: 8-9 | Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 3 minutes

1 package Ukrop’s Gingerbread

Cream Cheese Topping:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 Tbsp. milk
1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract


Lemon Sauce:

1/4 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar
2 Tbsps. flour

1 1/4 cup boiling water

1/2 tsp. grated lemon peel
Dash of nutmeg

1 1/2 tsps. lemon juice

In a small bowl, mix cream cheese with milk, sugar and vanilla. Blend until smooth. Set aside.

In a saucepan, stir together the butter, sugar, and flour. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring as you go. Add lemon peel and nutmeg. Boil 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Spread cream cheese topping on top of gingerbread. Drizzle with lemon sauce.

Congratulations to our Halloween Celebration Ideas Contest Winner, Peggy! Peggy shared a scary and delicious-sounding recipe for Peanut Butter Eyeballs, and she'll be getting a $100 Ukrop's Gift Card. Here is Peggy's special recipe:

Halloween is one of my very favorite holidays!  I love decorating inside and outside our home and I really enjoy making special treats for our family and friends who visit us on Halloween evening.  One of our spooky, and easy, favorites are Peanut Butter Eyeballs. 

Peanut Butter Eyeballs

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
3 Tbsps. softened butter
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
6 oz. white chocolate candy coating
1 small bag m&m's
Red decorator frosting.

In a bowl with a mixer, blend peanut butter and butter until creamy. Add powdered sugar and vanilla and continue beating until mixture forms a thick cookie dough. Using a spoon, scoop out balls of peanut butter candy and roll between your palms to make them as round as possible. Place them on the cookie sheet and put them in refrigerator or freezer for at least 30 minutes.

In a separate bowl, melt the white chocolate coating in the microwave by heating 1 minutea at a time. Stir after every minute until it is smooth throughout. Use two forks to dip the peanut butter balls into the chocolate coating.
While the chocolate is still wet, press an m&m into the center for the iris. Return the eyes to the refrigerator to harden. Use red decorator frosting to make squiggly blood vessels.

The eyeballs look really scary and taste delicious. Happy Halloween!!

Here are two more of our favorite entries. Thanks to everyone who participated. It was definitely hard to pick a winner, with all of the great ideas our readers shared. Keep your eyes out for more fun contests coming soon!

This recipe from Martha sounded delicious and totally unique.

"I made these for my 2 granddaughters and their 3 friends."

Tricky Turnover Treats
Serves: 5

1/2 lb. ground beef
1/4 cup minced onion
1/4 cup French's prepared yellow mustard
4 oz. mozzarella cheese, cut into cubes
2 8-oz. cans buttermilk biscuits
1 egg

Prehat oven to 350 degrees. Brown ground beef in skillet. Stir in onion,  yellow mustard and mozzarella cubes. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until cheese melts. 

Using a rolling pin, roll each biscuit into a 3-inch circle. Spoon ground-beef filling onto first 10 biscuits. Cut jack-o-lantern faces into remaining 10 biscuits and place over ground beef mixture, pressing edges of dough together to seal. To make stems for pumpkins, use the pieces of dough that were left from the face cut-outs.  Place on ungreased baking sheet; brush with slightly beaten egg.  Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown.

Our other favorite came from Elizabeth, and it was a fun idea for pulling neighbors and friends into the Halloween spirit.

"One of our favorite family activities during the month of October has been to 'haunt' our friends and neighbors by leaving a plate or tin of homemade pumpkin-shaped cookies on their porch, ringing the doorbell and running.  We include a paper with a figure of a cute ghost, and an anonymous note that instructs them to leave the ghost in a window so that other neighbors know they've already been haunted.  We also leave an extra note and ghost for them to use if they want to haunt someone else in turn.  It was great fun seeing all the ghosts go up in the windows of the neighborhood and know the fun was being passed on."

Gloopy green guacamole is a perfect treat to serve at any Halloween feast, along with eery blue corn chips. A great way to dress up your favorite guacamole recipe (or make the pre-made version we sell in our produce department your own) is to decorate it with a fun spider web. Once you’ve mastered the spider-web technique, you can use it in a variety of places. Try decorating a cake with a frosting spider web, or making sour cream spider webs on top of ghoulish cauldrons of tomato soup.

Spider Webs and Green Goop

You’ll need:
1 serving bowl
Guacomole (homemade or store bought) to fill the bowl
Sour cream
1 plastic bag
Skewer or tooth pick
Blue corn chips

Spoon guacomole into bowl, smoothing on top with a spoon. Place sour cream into plastic bag and seal. Using scissors, clip off corner of bag. Use your homemade pastry bag to pipe concentric circles of sour cream on top of the guacamole, finishing with a dot of sour cream in the center. Insert skewer or toothpick into center of guacamole and drag out to the edge of the bowl. Repeat the dragging, starting at the middle and dragging out to different spots on the edge of the bowl, several more times until you’re satisfied with your spider web.

These Scary Spiders are a spooky-looking treat that kids will love assembling. Here’s how to make them:

Materials:
1 container Chocolate Cake Donut Holes from Ukrop’s Bakery
1 tub Ukrop’s Chocolate Buttercream Icing
1 bag m&m’s (we used brightly colored m&m's found in our Halloween candy section)
About 12 black licorice pieces, cut into thin strips
White icing, in a tube

Cut donut holes in half widthwise. Spread Buttercream icing on tops and bottom halves. Carefully place 8 licorice strips in icing on bottom half of donut hole, 4 on each side, to resemble spider legs. Replace top donut-hole half and press gently to seal. Place two blobs of white icing on top of spider where eyes would go and affix green m&m’s. Top with two tiny dots of white icing for pupils. Yield: about 20 spiders.

Along with homemade treats, you can also serve pre-made items from Ukrop’s at your spooky soirée. A bit of creative arranging can keep your dishes in the holiday spirit.

Mummy guts (pictured above) make a great snack for a kids’ party. Just pick up a package or two of Henning’s Mozzarella Whips in our deli and pile them into a bowl. They’ll look creepy and twisted together and kids will love eating them!

Another simple idea is to make boney spinal cords out of our deli pinwheels. Order your favorite deli pinwheel varieties from Ukrop’s catering. When it’s time to serve them, stack them slightly askew, one slightly off center to the right and one to the left and so on, on a dark-toned tray. They’ll look creepy and taste delicious!

Use our pre-made deviled eggs to create evil egg eyes. Just pick up a few packages of deviled eggs from our kitchen and lay them out on a tray two by two, turned horizontally so they resemble pairs of eyes. Top each one with a slice of a black or pimento-stuffed green olive to represent the pupil.

Grab your favorite pre-made dip or spread from Ukrop's Kitchen and make it festive by serving it in hollowed out pumpkin. Grab a pie pumpkin from our produce department, scrape out the innards when you get home, and fill it with your favorite dip. This is also a great option for Thanksgiving appetizers.

Don’t forget to share your favorite Halloween treats on our blog for a chance to win a $100 Ukrop’s gift card!