By Rhonda Bramell at Bramell, Party of Five

I spent some quality time in the kitchen with my kids last Saturday, on the first day we’ve had some genuine fall temperatures, working on our first Halloween themed treats. Doing so taught me a couple of things. For one, I realize why I’m not a food blogger or photographer. And two, doing anything in the kitchen with three helpers takes twice as long as it should.

With so many eager helpers, I had to choose our recipe wisely. It had to be something fairly easy and with enough steps that everyone could pitch in. After searching my pins on Pinterest, we decided on the Pumpkin Rice Krispies.

The ingredients are mainly those for making traditional Rice Krispies Treats, with a little Halloween flair. (Recipe originally appeared on With Sprinkles On Top.)

3 Tablespoons butter
1 pkg mini marshmallows
6 cups Rice Krispies cereal
Orange food coloring (I mixed red and yellow)
Black Icing
Mini Tootsie Rolls

Over medium heat, melt the butter in a large saucepan. Then add in the marshmallows and melt together. Once smooth, remove the pan from heat. Add in the food coloring to tint marshmallow mixture orange. Immediately stir in the cereal and mix thoroughly.

When it’s cooled enough to touch, form the cereal mixture into 3” balls. Here’s the tricky part: it works best to wet your hands before shaping into the pumpkins; otherwise, the cereal will stick to your hands. Thanks, mom, for teaching me this trick many years ago.

We cut the Tootsie rolls in half, and inserted one half into the top of each treat to look like a stem. I placed the formed treats onto waxed paper to cool. Once completely cooled, I decorated the faces with black gel icing. Then I turned into a wicked witch because I made my kids wait until after dinner to eat them!

Rhonda Bramell lives in Springdale with her family and middle-aged, spoiled dog. In the daytime, she works as the Marketing Manager at the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayetteville. At night, she spends a lot of time doing laundry, cooking dinner and doing first grade homework. You can find her blogging at www.bramell.blogspot.com to see how being OK at something is good enough.