Preparing fun food is a fantastic way to add festive flair to a holiday celebration, and when it comes to Halloween, there are endless “spook”tacular Halloween food ideas.
One of my favourite ways to celebrate Halloween is to make a fun supper for my kids to enjoy before they head out the door to trick or treat. A pumpkin pizza is an annual favourite in our home. Start with a homemade or store-bought pizza, and make a jack-o’-lantern face out of pizza toppings. Add a green pepper “stem”, and presto… pumpkin pizza.
If pizza isn’t your thing, you can cut a jack-o’-lantern face out of a piece of bread or a tortilla to make a Halloween grilled cheese sandwich or cheese quesadillas.
It’s also fun to treat the kids to a special Halloween dessert. With only two ingredients, and less than a minute, you can create wickedly good (and super simple) individual caldron cakes. Start with a black mug (caldron) and add: 3 tablespoons of high-quality chocolate fudge cake mix, 2 tablespoons of water, and 1 tablespoon of chocolate chips. Mix well, microwave for 50 seconds, add whipped cream and orange sprinkles, and enjoy! It makes a small amount of rich, fudgy cake, so it’s great for trick or treaters.
Creating fun treats to share with classmates, friends and trick or treaters is also wonderful. The easiest (and most clever) way is to customize store bought goodies. For example, store bought donuts can easily be transformed into vampire donuts by adding candy eyes with icing “glue” and inserting plastic vampire teeth into the holes.
Candy packaged in a creative way is fantastic too. Lollipops become ghosts by wrapping the tops with tissues, securing with elastics, and drawing faces with a sharpie. Alternatively, plastic gloves can be used as candy bags, and chocolate bars can be wrapped in pieces of gauze (with googly eyes added) to create adorable “mummy” treats. Chocolate bars can also become bats by wrapping them in black tissue paper, twisting the ends to make wings, and adding googly eyes and fangs.
If you are planning to host a Halloween party, you’ll want to make sure you have trays filled with spooky treats. Some simple options are bags of white donut “spider eggs”, “blood”-spattered Oreos made by drizzling melted red chocolate over the cookies, and a cookie tart decorated to look like a spiderweb.
Charcuterie boards are another delightful party option, and they are very “on trend” right now. You can make an impressive candy board by grouping different candy options together by colour, or you can stick a skeleton in the middle of a tray and surround it with treats.
For drinks, you may want to serve a bowl of punch containing a “frozen hand.” A glove filled with water (placed in the freezer) makes a perfect hand-shaped ice cube. Wine bottles decorated with gauze and google eyes (to look like mummies) are perfect for older guests.
Don’t forget the party favours. Small mason jars filled with cookies, containers of icing and containers of sprinkles make wonderful goodie bags to share with guests after the party is over.
Halloween food preparation provides an ideal opportunity to make Oct. 31 memorable and fun. With a little effort, a few shortcuts, and a bit of imagination, you can easily prepare “spook”tacular Halloween food this year!
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