I recently joined fellow Gapers Block food writers at Ras Dashen for a delicious dinner of Ethiopian food. One of the new contributors, Shanna Quinn, mentioned that after reading recipes for homemade candy corn, she experimented with a few to create candy pumpkins. She posted the recipe a few days later and I promptly marked it to try myself.

Candy making is not my strong point in the kitchen, but I followed Shanna's recipe exactly and it worked out very well. While the final product is a bit softer, the flavor is remarkably true to store-bought. I wound up with quite a bit of extra green dough after dividing it in the quantities the recipe calls for.  This gave me the opportunity to make some green pumpkins and candy snakes. Though, if you want all of your candy to look more traditional, I'd recommend making slightly less green dough.