McCormick Black Food Color. $2.80 per 1-ounce bottle.
Bonnie: Most folks generally desire black-colored icing to decorate cakes for Halloween. But I've also used it to create cakes featuring black cats, a soccer ball and a piano keyboard. That's why I've always kept a supply of black food paste on hand (available online and at specialty cake decorating stores). That black is much more vibrant than the one you could create by using McCormick's suggestion of combining the blue, red and green in supermarket food coloring kits (which made more of a gray).
McCormick's new black food coloring makes a much darker black than that mixture, especially when added to chocolate icing. In fact, it's almost as intense as my black food paste. Incidentally, food pastes also produce much bluer blues, greener greens and, what's perhaps of even greater concern this coming week, orangier oranges.
Carolyn: When it comes to food, appearances count almost as much as taste does. This truism was driven home the other day when I was eating chocolate icing tinted with McCormick's new black food coloring. Because it was so black, it also was not that appetizing. It also didn't seem to taste as chocolaty as brown chocolate (although I know it was my head playing tricks on me, the way it does with my preference for brown M&M's).
For that reason, I would say to use this only if there were no other artistic option. For example, if the cat could just as easily be brown, make it brown because it will taste better. Moreover, you'd have to be an awfully depressed baker — or Dracula — to need a bottle of black food coloring this big.
Nestle Toll House Pumpkin Pals Sugar Cookies. $2.50 per 13.5-ounce package of refrigerated dough yielding 24 pre-cut cookies.
Bonnie: Just in time for Halloween, Nestle offers a seasonal orange twist to its traditional sugar cookie. A package of Pumpkin Pals Cookie dough contains six different pumpkin-shape designs ready to decorate and bake.
Fill the indentations on the pumpkin faces with colored decorating gels before baking, or mix some of the previously mentioned McCormick's black food coloring with confectioners' sugar to decorate afterward. Roll the extra dough into balls after removing the cutout pumpkins from the sheet of sugar-cookie dough, flatten slightly and bake those, too. Hand out these cookies to all those little trick-or-treaters you know to save them some sugar consumption, vs. eating almost any candy.
Carolyn: Pumpkin Pals is one of few ready-to-bake refrigerated dough products that's been precut into shapes. It also has friendly (not scary) jack-o'-lantern faces carved onto the surfaces of the cookies and are orange-colored. In other words, they're as cute as cute can be. They're also pretty much a done deal, except for the cooking. (Most people aren't going to notice the package's suggestion to fill in the jack-o'-lantern faces with cake decorating gel until they're home where there is no decorating gel. In any case, on the creativity scale, that's only slightly higher than painting by numbers.)
These would make a better purchase for the busy mom who's hosting a small Halloween get-together or who wants to surprise the family with a special dessert Halloween evening.
3 Musketeers Autumn Minis Mix. Strawberry, French Vanilla, and Mocha Cappuccino. $3.19 per 9-ounce bag.
Bonnie: On the shelves in time for visiting trick-or-treaters next week are three different flavored 3 Musketeers Minis, the chocolate-coated nougat candy that's oddly called Milky Way in most other countries.
These new minis feature flavors reminiscent of the three pieces in the original 1932 candy. One 3 Musketeers bar (about 2 ounces), or 10 minis, contains 260 calories and 8 grams of total fat, of which 5 are saturated. The good thing is that these come in little pieces containing a mere 24 calories and less than 1 gram of fat. One or two will satisfy you and will save you calories and fat over a full-size bar.
Carolyn: 3 Musketeers has gone back to the future to create this new limited edition Autumn Minis Mix. This candy bar was named 3 Musketeers because it originally consisted of three miniature chocolate-covered candy bar pieces with three different nougat centers: strawberry, vanilla and chocolate, or almost exactly what this new Autumn Minis Mix contains.
The difference is that this new vanilla-flavored one is called French Vanilla (appropriate, considering that the literary musketeers that inspired this candy bar's name served the king of France). And the chocolate flavor that is now the bar's standard has been replaced by the particularly strongly flavored and delicious Mocha Cappuccino.
Although these are being released in time for Halloween, the sophisticated flavors and the packaging (leaves instead of pumpkins) are obviously aimed at an adult market. I could imagine dieters finding a single 25-calorie mini Mocha Cappuccino as an almost satisfactory substitute for the 175- to 255-calorie drink.
I recommend that anyone who hands out candy at Halloween should buy all the kid-friendly fare you think you'll need PLUS a bag of this Minis Mix — in hopes you estimated correctly and, at the end of the evening, you'll get to eat it.
Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat" (Quirk). Each week they critique three new food items. For previous columns, visit www.supermarketsampler.com, and for more food info and chances to win free products, visit www.biteofthebest.com. © Universal Press Syndicate