Dress up ice cream for a sweet Halloween treat

Ice cream can take on a seasonal look for Halloween with the exercise of a little ingenuity. Here are some suggestions:

-- To make a "witch" dessert, place rounded scoops of ice cream onto a sheet of wax paper. Place a chocolate-dipped sugar cone on top of each scoop to look like a witch's hat; use colored candies to make eyes, mouth and nose for the faces.

-- To make a spooky spider, scoop chocolate fudge ice cream onto wax paper and decorate each rounded scoop with chocolate chips or raisins to make spider eyes. Then cut licorice into strips to make legs, eight for each spider.

-- To make ice-cream jack-o'-lanterns, hollow out navel oranges by first cutting a slice off the top of each (reserve the tops), then scooping out the pulp. With a sharp, pointed knife, cut a jack-o'-lantern face into each orange shell "pumpkin." Pack the shells with scoops of dark chocolate ice cream -- but don't pack so tightly that the ice cream oozes out through the eye or mouth cutouts. Cut a center hole in each of the orange tops, put the tops back on the filled oranges, and poke a cinnamon-stick "stem" through each hole, anchoring it in the ice cream.