Halloween Party Food

With the increasing popularity of the Halloween Party, so Halloween Party Food has developed.  Depending on your imagination, and the age group at your party, you can turn even the most ordinary foods into something gruesome, by giving it a ghastly name and serving it in a frightening way!

Many supermarkets, bakeries and high street stores offer a growing range of Halloween party foods.  If you are in need of some ideas then we have produced a comprehensive list of Halloween Party Food, from the very simple to the more adventurous.  If you do not have the time for detailed recipes, sometimes just adding a label with gruesome name to a plate of rectangular sandwiches, suddenly turns plate of sandwiches into tombstones, or coffins!  If you have other adult helpers with you encourage them to use the spooky names too.  Just think gory - spaghetti on toast can become worms on toast with a little imagination!

Here are some more detailed ideas to get you started with fiendish food and dastardly drinks for your foul friends!

Savoury Halloween Party Food

Spooky Sandwiches
Halloween pastry cutters are becoming more readily available.  Use these to cut pumpkin, bat, witch or ghost shapes from sandwiches.  This is a quick and very easy way to adapt normal sandwiches into Halloween Party Food.

Bat wings
Bat wings are only chicken wings with a gruesome name.  Easy to prepare in advance and label accordingly.

Cheesy eyeballs
These are the puffed cheesy maize snacks that most supermarket chains stock in the crisp aisle. 

Blood and Chips
A very easy Halloween Party Food – chips and blood red ketchup!  It’s all in a name.

Bloodshot Eyes
Devilled Eggs with an eerie twist, a dish to make your guests look twice!

Devilled Egg Recipe
6 eggs
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard (dry powder)
Pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Green / blue food colouring
Black olives

• Place the eggs in a large pan and cover with water with a few tablespoons of vinegar, bring to the boil gradually. Once boiling simmer for 10 minutes, and remove from the heat.  When the eggs are cool enough to pick up gently crack the shells – leaving the shells on the egg.  Place the cracked eggs back in the water with ample red food colouring.  Let the eggs soak in the red water for at least half an hour.
• Peel and remove all the egg shell – the red colouring should have seeped through the cracks and left ‘bloodshot’ veins over the eggs.  Cut the eggs in half lengthways; carefully remove the yolks into another bowl.  Mash the yolks and add the mayonnaise, mustard powder, salt, pepper and green or blue food colouring (depending on the colour of ‘eyes’ you would like) and mix well.  Fill the egg whites with the mixture and top each with half a black olive.

Sweet Halloween Party Food

Edible Spiders (No baking required)
These are spiders made from Royal Icing coloured with black food colouring, piped onto baking paper to make a spider shape. 

Royal Icing Recipe
1 egg white
8oz (225g) sieved icing sugar
Black food colouring

• In a bowl break the egg white up with a fork and gradually beat in half the icing sugar.  Then gradually add the other half of the icing sugar and food colouring if desired.  Beat until the icing has peaks that will stand on their own. 
• Place the icing in a piping bag and onto a lightly greased sheet of baking paper pipe a small flat circular body shape, with eight legs (four each side).  Remember to keep the spiders small enough to fit into your mouth!  Allow to dry and harden on the paper. 
• Carefully remove the spiders and pace on a paper plate with a spider web drawn on it.  The spiders are very fragile but once eaten dissolve in your mouth!

Crack and Crunch Bones
Bone shaped Meringue fingers that crack and crunch as you eat them!

Meringue Recipe
1 egg white
2oz caster sugar

• Pre heat the oven to 140’C (Gas 1).  In a bowl break the egg white up with a fork and beat with a whisk until the mix stands in white tall peaks (2 -3 minutes).  Gently add in the sugar a spoon at a time whilst still whisking until the mixture goes stiff and glossy. (5 – 10 minutes).
• Carefully fill an icing pipe bag with mix and onto lightly greased baking paper on a baking tray, pipe bone shapes leaving a few centimetres between each.
• Bake until the ‘bones’ look dry and pale.  Once the ‘bones’ have cooled, remove carefully from paper and store in an air tight container to keep brittle and crunchy.

Halloween Biscuits
Using your favourite biscuit / cookie recipe (or the biscuit recipe below) mix as normal, but use Halloween cutters to make spooky shapes.

Biscuit Recipe
18oz Self Raising flour
4oz butter
8oz sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon Vanilla essence
1 tablespoon milk (water for non dairy version)
Food colouring if required (eg orange if you are making all pumpkins)

• Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl; add the eggs, vanilla, milk (water) and food colouring.  Mix into a wet paste.  Fold in the flour to make a dough.  (Add a little more flour if too sticky).
• Roll out on a floured surface to ½” thickness.  Cut out biscuit shapes and place on a baking tray.
• Cook in preheated oven at 150’C for 10-15 minutes.  (10 minutes gives a softer biscuit, 15 a crunchier one).
• After cooling you can serve on a plate or decorate with appropriate coloured icing.  Usually a plain base colour ie black for bats and witches, orange pumpkins and white for ghosts.
• Allow the plain base colour to dry completely then use individual coloured icing tubes (from supermarkets) to add details.  Use red to make eyes on the bats, green eyes for the witches and black faces on the pumpkins.

Witches fingers
Using the biscuit recipe above or taking some dough from this mix, roll a small amount of dough into a finger-like shape.  Place on the baking tray, but before cooking push a flaked almond into the end of the ‘finger’ to make a finger nail.  Bake as in the recipe for Halloween Biscuits.

Rotten apples
These can be used as a table decoration, snack, disgusting dessert or for a Halloween Party Bag (See UK-Entertainers Halloween Decorations article).  Wash the number of eating apples you require.  Using a small, sharp knife cut a small round hole in one side of the top of an apple.  (An apple corer is excellent for this – but don’t go all the way through). 

Once you have made a hole, place a chewy jelly worm sweet in the hole so that it looks as if the worm has been munching its way through the apple.  To stop the exposed apple flesh from turning brown cover with a few drops of lemon juice before inserting the worm – although the brown look may add to the effect!

Bogey Blobs
Using large ice cube mould make green or yellow jelly according to the instructions.  Grease the inside of the ice cube mould, and pour the jelly into the moulds.  If you wish to give an added YUK then add jelly worm sweets as the jelly is cooling.  To help release the ‘bogey blobs’ run the back of the ice cube tray under warm water.

Slimy Bug Sludge
Similar to the ‘snot cubes’ make green (and / or yellow) jelly as per the packets instructions in separate bowls.  Once set turn out onto a large plate or in a clean cauldron, and mash together.  Add some jelly worms and other bug sweets to your sludge and stir them in well.  Serve with a ladle – this is particularly effective from a cauldron.

Eyeballs with Blood Sauce
Using raspberry ripple ice-cream, place two ice-cream scoops next to each other in a bowl, making blood shot eyes.  Use two jelly sweets, coloured chocolate beans or coloured liquorice sweets to place on top of the eyeballs.  Squirt ‘blood’ (raspberry or strawberry) sauce on or around the eyeballs.

Spider Web Cake
This Spider Web Cake is the Halloween equivalent of a Birthday cake but can also be an eye catching centre piece for any Halloween Party table.  It can be home made using the recipe below or simply decorate a purchased large round sponge cake using the decorate section below.

Victoria Sponge Recipe
175g (6oz) softened butter / margarine
175g (6oz) (caster) sugar
3 beaten eggs
175g (6oz) self raising flour (sieved)
1 tablespoon hot water
1 tablespoon cocoa powder –if you’d like a chocolate coloured cake
Icing sugar, water and liquorice to decorate
Black food colouring pen

• Grease and line two 20cm (8”) round tins.  Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Gradually beat in the eggs.  Fold in the flour (and cocoa if required), and add the hot water and mix until a smooth.  Divide between the two tins and spread evenly. 
• Bake in preheated oven at 180’C / 350’F / Gas 4 for 25-30 minutes until golden brown on top.  Remove from oven turn onto cooling rack until cool.  Spread blood red raspberry / strawberry jam on one cake and place second on top.
• To decorate ice the top cake with plain white or yellow icing.  Using a black food colouring pen whilst the plain icing is still wet draw concentric circles starting in the centre with the smallest, surrounded by a larger one, then another all the way to the edge of the cake with the largest. 
• Using the edge of a fork prong dipped in boiling water draw a line from the centre of the cake to the edge (At one o’clock if it were a clock face). Turn the cake and repeat dipping the fork each time until you have drawn lines from the centre out to the numbers on a clock face.  Roll a length of liquorice and place on the cake for the spiders body.  Cut eight shorter pieces and arrange as the spiders legs.

Gravestone Cakes
Using the sponge recipe as for the Spiders Web Cake, but divide mixture into fairy cake paper cases in a bun tin, and cook as instructed above.

Ingredients
Icing sugar
Green food colouring
Rich tea finger biscuits

• When the fairy cakes have cooled, decorate with green icing for grass and firmly push a rich tea finger biscuit into the centre of the cake for a ‘gravestone’.  You can angle some ‘gravestones’ that may be a little older and more derelict than others.
• Place on a sandwich platter or large plate to create your own graveyard.

Dastardly Drinks

To compliment your Halloween Party Foods, we have added some simple, yet very effective ideas to make your party drinks dastardly!

Vampire Broth

Ingredients
Cola
Vanilla ice cream

• Fill clear glasses two thirds full with the cola drink, then add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and your broth will start to froth!

Green Slime Lemonade

Ingredients
Green food colouring,
Lemonade,
Lime cut into thin slices

• Fill an ice-cube tray with water mixed with a green food colouring to make green ice cubes. Pour lemonade into glasses; add the green ice-cubes. Cut slices of lime and add to the drink – as the ice cubes melt the drink will become more and more green!

Eyeball Ice Cubes
Half fill an ice cube tray with water.  Cut green grapes in half and press a raisin into each half to make an eyeball, and add a grape to each section of the ice cube tray and then freeze.  Add to your dastardly drinks.

There are many variations for Halloween Party Foods.  It is possible to produce a spooky Halloween feast with relatively little effort and cost.  Whatever you decide to do, the fun is in the eating – especially if you have given your dishes names with a gruesome twist!