What to do with your leftover Halloween candy

The trick-or-treating is done. The jack-o-lanterns have been tossed. The office party was fine. Now, there's only one post-Halloween task to take care of: your beautiful surplus of candy.

Candy is good, so having a lot of it is not necessarily a problem. But if you have "too much" candy, you have a few options for getting rid of it without causing unnecessary waste.

That being said, extra candy corn can go directly in the trash.

Donate it

Some nonprofit organizations seek out candy donations after Halloween, including Operation Gratitude and a few local chapters of the Ronald McDonald House.

You can also call shelters, schools, and nursing homes in your area to see if they're accepting candy donations. Be sure to give them advance notice, though — if they don't want candy, showing up unannounced with an enormous bag of candy is not the move.

Leave it out in your office

It doesn't matter if it's full of Reese's pumpkins or Smarties — if there's a candy bowl in an office, people are going to take that candy. For maximum impact, place your candy bowl in a highly-trafficked area of the office, like the kitchen or outside a conference room where meetings often run long. It'll be gone in no time.

Celebrate a convenient fake holiday

As luck (capitalism) would have it, National Candy Day falls on Nov. 4. If you still have candy lying around, National Candy Day is a wonderful excuse to bring it wherever you go, distributing it to everyone you encounter like some kind of unhinged fake holiday enthusiast. They might be weirded out, but you'll have less candy — and isn't that the goal?

Cook with it

Cooking with candy is a real hit-or-miss endeavor. If you prefer your desserts on the extremely sweet side, though, you can probably pull a few dishes off. On the blog Crazy for Crust, you'll find a recipe for "candy bar pie," which seems wild but also ... kind of good? It's visually interesting at the very least.

Then there are the classics, like Butterfinger bars and peanut butter blossom cookies. If all else fails, chop up a bunch of chocolate bars and use them as an ice cream topping. There is a zero percent chance it will taste bad.