You're probably not alone. Americans readily shell out some $2 billion a year for all those sweet treats, but it doesn't take many mini chocolate bars, Tootsie Roll Pops and ghost Peeps for sugar fatigue to set in.

But rather than dump your excess in the office candy jar or let it go stale under your child's bed, consider some creative and seriously sweet ways of overindulging just a little bit more.

For example, melted peanut-butter cups can dress up a dish of ice cream. Cookies don't need chocolate chips when you have crushed candy bars. And imagine a layer of York peppermint patties baked into a pan of brownies.

''It's sort of sickening how much candy you get at Halloween,'' says Pamela Mitchell, executive food editor at Every Day With Rachael Ray magazine. ''My 8-year-old stores it, but he doesn't eat it all. He just gets exhausted by it.'' Taste of Home magazine's new book, The Taste of Home Baking Book, has dozens of dessert recipes, and 117 of them can provide a home for your leftover Halloween candy. Here are some more ideas that will have you raiding your child's sugar stash.

* Peanut-butter cups

Mitchell suggests using a double-boiler or microwave to melt Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for a sauce over cake or ice cream. Werner presses the mini cups into the middle of cupcakes or on top of thumbprint cookies (in place of the jam).

* Candy corn

Fold candy corn into pancakes or roll them into popcorn balls and puffed-rice treats. When she's icing a cake, Werner uses candy corns as a bottom border, in place of piped icing. But they work as well on top of iced cupcakes.

* Lollipops or other hard candy

The obvious choice is stained-glass cookies, says Deanna Cook, director of creative development for FamilyFun magazine. Make a 4-inch sugar cookie and use a 2-inch cutter to remove the center. Place the cookie on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet and fill the center with crushed hard candy. Bake until the candy is melted, then let it cool before moving it.

* Snickers, Baby Ruth, Heath toffee bars, M&M's and other chocolate candy

There are so many options you may never eat these candies straight up again. Use a food processor to quickly chop bars into bits, then fold them into cookie dough in place of chocolate chips. Or use them to top brownies and other baked bars. * Disposal

And what if you just want the junk food out of the house? Food experts have ideas there too. Cook has heard from parents who persuade their children to let the Great Pumpkin or Sugar Witch make off with candy in the night. They awake to a small present instead, perhaps an electric toothbrush.

Other parents buy their children's candy a piece at a time or let them trade it in for special time with Mom or Dad. And where does it all end up? Probably back in the office, but perhaps transformed into cookies and brownies.