Halloween Recipes
Great Halloween party food ideas
When making Halloween food, intersperse orange, black and red elements as much as possible. Additionally, use popular holiday shapes in your Halloween recipes. Creativity and presentation can turn an everyday recipe into a truly haunting dining experience.
Heighten the fright by serving items on tarnished silver for an eerie appearance. Hollowed-out pumpkins make great serving containers, too. Either can be lined with black napkins or doilies. You can also find Halloween-themed serving dishes at many discount and department stores, or buy a plain, inexpensive tray and hot glue plastic bugs around the edge.
Halloween Party Food
Parties often revolve around the food, and Halloween parties should be no exception! Delight your guests with these delicious yet devilish treats.
Create Halloween appetizers by renaming old favorites: mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce become “baby fingers with blood dip,” for example, and your traditional bread dip becomes “pureed brains”. The traditional bowl of salsa surrounded by red and purple tortilla chips puts a colorful Halloween-themed twist on an old favorite, as do cold vegetables served in a hollowed-out pumpkin (if the pumpkin is too deep, put orange plastic wrap or ice in the bottom) and steamed mussels smothered with red sauce.
Keep the theme going with these chilling entrees. Prepare mini sliders with a bowl of ketchup and a side of roasted orange peppers. Cut pitted, halved black olives into tiny witch hats to add to a Caesar salad. Serve spicy wings with a red sauce or large hot dogs covered in chili to look like intestines.
Of course, Halloween is all about the treats, so every good Halloween party needs dessert! Halloween cakes are easy to make with a variety of Halloween-themed cake molds, such as bats, pumpkins and ghosts. Create a delicious bat-shaped ice cream cake by spraying a bat mold with nonstick spray and filling it with chocolate ice cream. Let it sit overnight and then serve it mold-side up on a platter and place a hot cloth over the mold to break its seal and uncover the cake. Create a ghost cake by baking a regular vanilla sheet cake, making a ghost template out of wax paper, and then cutting around the template to shape the cake. Ice with vanilla frosting and use two large chocolate discs or chocolate-covered cookies for eyes. For a simpler dessert, buy or make cupcakes and top them with candy pumpkins.
Prepare a healthier dessert by offering a fruit plate garnished with prune spiders; line up four small pieces of black shoestring licorice and then set a prune on top and in the middle to create the look of this eight-legged creepy crawly.
Of course, don’t forget to send your guests away with a goody bag. Place assorted Halloween candy in a ten-inch square of black or orange tulle, gather the corners, and tie with black or orange ribbon (using the opposite color to the tulle creates greater impact). You can even glue a plastic spider to the side of the bag for a little extra fright.
Halloween Drinks
Serve pitchers of orange and dark-colored soda. Wrap black paper around beer cans and write “Drink at Your Own Risk” in white pencil. If desired, you can freeze latex gloves with water and let the chilled fingers help keep the beer cold. Serve dark sangria accented with orange fruit in a glass caldron. Find some online photographs of skulls and cross bones to tape on other assorted liquor.
