Every year, supermarkets stock Halloween treats earlier and earlier. We’re not big on Halloween, we don’t host or go to Halloween parties, and as kids, we rarely went trick or treating.
But, just because we don’t mark Halloween, that doesn’t mean we’re going to ignore it – we know it’s a popular celebration and some of our readers take note of it.
We spent an afternoon shopping around, looking at all UK supermarkets to see what Halloween treats, sweets, and savoury snacks they had on their shelves.
And to our surprise, the only shop that had anything remotely interesting or different was M&S.
Shopping at M&S isn’t exactly budget-friendly, it’s never come top of any of our best value lists and, although the quality is higher than other supermarkets, we can never justify the spend.
You can also make your own monster cupcakes, with chocolate sponge and purple icing and spooky eyes.
There are plenty of spooky sweets you can buy including Colin the Caterpillar spooky sours, ‘freshly dug’ sweetie bag, and cheesy bat fangs among a few of them.
We bought the haunted house, cheesy bat fangs, pumpkin biscuits (vanilla and chocolate flavour), Hocus Croakus and Made Without Dairy Munch.
How much do the M&S Halloween treats cost?
- Build Your Own Chocolate Haunted House – costs £7
- Cheesy Bat Fangs – costs £2
- Petrifying Pumpkin Biscuits – costs £2
- Made Without Dairy Munch – costs £3
- Hocus Croakus chocolate frog – costs £1
The rest of the M&S Halloween treat line up ranges from £1 to £3, with the Chocolate Haunted House representing the most expensive option on the shelf.
There’s a whole variety of hard and chewy sweets, chocolates, biscuits, and cakes to choose from. What you buy all depends on your budget, and whether you’re going all out and hosting a Halloween party, or are just doing a little something for the kids.
If you’re buying Halloween sweets for trick or treaters, then a big sweet multi-bag or the chocolate eyeballs and pumpkins would be a good choice.
How much sugar do the M&S Halloween treats contain?
M&S do a Made Without range, with products avoiding all of the usual suspects like dairy and gluten. Like most free-from ranges, you won’t find any ‘Made Without’ sugar sweets, unless, of course, you opt for savoury snacks.
As such, any sweet treat you buy from M&S won’t be diabetic-friendly. It’s bad news for two of Simple & Homely’s tastetesters, who’ll both be limited to eating the cheesy bat fangs. But, for the sake of a few little taste tests, they’ll both use the following carbohydrate information to calculate their insulin:
Chocolate Haunted House
- Total carbohydrates, per 47g serving: 33.4g
- Of which are sugars, per 47g serving: 16.8g
Petrifying pumpkins
- Total carbohydrates, per 100g: 59.7g
- Of which are sugars, per 100g: 19g
Made Without Dairy Munch
- Total carbohydrates, per 100g: 65.6g
- Of which are sugars, per 100g: 51.3g
Cheesy Bat Fangs
- Total carbohydrates, per 25g serving: 14.1g
- Of which are sugars, per 25g serving: 2g
Constructing the Haunted House
The Haunted House smelt strongly of chocolate, and in the box M&S had supplied four walls and two roof pieces, as well as two small icing tubes for decor, a large icing tube for construction, and two packs of sweets for decoration.
Upon opening the box, we found the corner of the roof on one side had broken off, but we fixed that with a bit of well placed icing – well, we did until we started building. It took two adults – and a third providing helpful comments – over 15 minutes to put the house together to a standard they were happy with. And that involved redoing the roof and re-icing all the joins.
A gym-rat 18 year old (Harry, our how to boil an egg photographer) commented on how stiff to squeeze the icing tubes were, with frequent “this is hurting my hands” comments. He also didn’t believe M&S had supplied enough sweets to decorate more than one side of the house.
Both noted that you couldn’t make the house pictured on the box as M&S hadn’t supplied all of the decorations to do so. There was also the issue of decorating after building: the little green balls just wouldn’t stick.
We entertained the thought of decorating before building to solve the problem of escapee sweets, but decided that wouldn’t work, either. The decorations would just be knocked off and smudged if you tried to decorate before putting it all together.
All in all, it would be a good activity for children, but perhaps not adults. Or maybe as part of a Halloween party game, where everyone takes a turn to add some decoration to the house.
What did we think of the treats?
We piled a collection of family and partners into Cherie’s house and served the treats up after dinner. Almost like a Halloween gathering with slightly more fun.
Among others, we had a few you’ll have come across at Simple & Homely before: myself, Cherie, Harry (our How to boil an egg photographer), Cat (our sugar-free brioche and banana bread recipe creator), and dairy-free Emily (you’ll see dairy free cheese on her homemade pizza).
The Made Without Diary Munch treats were eaten by everyone; we think it’s important to make sure everyone likes it, not just the people who are conditioned to.
Handing round the bag, each of the different flavours were met with a lot of “mmmm” and “oh they’re nice, aren’t they” responses. The Munch contained sugar coated honeycomb, vegan marshmallows, raisins, and rice balls. Sort of like a lucky dip, Revels style share bag.
The overall feedback was positive. We’d definitely buy these again.
The Haunted House, now the icing had dried, was a solid structure. (Harry picked it up by the roof to demonstrate its structural integrity.)
How did it taste? Soft, like a bourbon. We probably wouldn’t buy it again, but if you’ve got kids who like chocolate biscuits and you want to keep them entertained.
The Petrifying Pumpkin biscuits didn’t contain pumpkin, but were vanilla and cocoa flavour butter biscuits. Like the Munch, the biscuits were met with impressed nods. They were thick, buttery, and soft.
