The Foodnetwork.com staff -- and pals from our sister sites Food2, Recipezaar, Fine Living and Healthy Eats -- kicked off the wicked weekend with a Halloween sweet swap.

The FN Dish's own Secretary Confidential led the sugar charge with these ghastly goodies (above). She claims she's no cooking pro, but these chocolate-y brownies, drizzled with icing in the shape of ghosts, tasted frightfully good. (Try making similar treats with Ina's Outrageous Brownies.)

Our resident baking goddess, Alexis, built this clever graveyard cake from her mom's chocolate cake recipe and homemade chocolate frosting. Then she used assorted candies, marshmallows and shortbread cookies to make spiders, ghosts and tombstones. (By the way, we were mesmerized by the new Blood Orange Dots candies she found at the market.)

Healthy Eats' Kristine wanted to make sure we weren't on calorie overload, so she prepped these lower-cal gingerbread bats. Who says gingerbread is only for Christmas? Get the right cookie cutter and it's a year-round fave. Better still, a medium-sized cookie is only 65 calories.

Balancing out her healthier treat, Kristine also shared some pumpkin whoopie pies with cream cheese filling (above) -- nothing light about these monster cookies! She spotted the recipe on Serious Eats this week. A tip from her: Eat them right away and up the cream cheese if you want a tangier, cream cheesier filling.

Pumpkin was definitely a flavor theme. Emily from the Food Network Store shared some decadent pumpkin-chocolate chip squares (below). The recipe is a secret (she won't give it up), but if you want to try something similar, how about these Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies?

And Kirsten, FN web editor and our party photographer, returned from her family's Nebraska pumpkin farm with a batch of pumpkin fudge. It went really fast! ( Read more about her trip home.)

Of course, we needed something to wash it down, so we mixed up some blood-red mocktails. These vibrant bevies are actually the classic Shirley Temple (one part Grenadine to three parts lemon-lime soda) that we tricked out with colorful gummy worms and skeletons, bats and spiders on the rims. We brainstormed for a festive name. Mark from Food2 was the winner: Shirley Temple of Doom. Runner up: Shirley's Got Worms!

Looking for last-minute Halloween ideas? Check out more tricky treats.