Whether having guests for a party or simply wanting a festive spread at the table, entertaining for Halloween can be done with a few key recipes. With a little planning, guests will be impressed and if some creativity is applied, it will look like a great deal of preparations have gone into the festivities.
Remember, people will be tired of candy and homemade food will be just the thing family and friends will be craving. Anyone can put together a table of packaged treats – if using such pre-made goods, the trick is to intersperse those goods with homemade recipes.
Easy Halloween Recipes
For Halloween appetizers, consider turning something ordinary into a Halloween treat. For example, a cheeseball can be molded into a pumpkin, and a beet-based “blood” dip can be be served out of gourds. Devilled eggs can be modified by a little food colouring, such as green or orange; also, add pieces of pepper to make ears or the devil’s pitchfork.
Worm sandwiches, constructed from hot dogs cut and boiled lengthwise, are sufficiently stomach-churning. Eyeballs from mozzarella balls, dabbed with black olive puree to represent pupils, are great additions to any salad. Mold peeled and cooked shrimp into a convincing brain, top with a little shrimp sauce and watch guests be torn between the temptation to eat or withdraw.
What’s better for a first course dish than serving soup? Halloween is the time to experiment with soups that feature squash – from pumpkin to butternut. Consider crossing squash soups with curry; curry can be used to make delicious Thai dishes that present the beautiful seasonal orange colour.
For main course meals, make the ordinary extraordinary! Turn chicken wings into barbecued bat wings by adding black dye to the sauce, or spaghetti into a vampire’s nightmare by adding garlic as both an ingredient and a decorative garnish. This is where creativity counts. Don’t just add food colouring: make the dish inspirational by changing its name to allude to the holiday – Jack-o-lantern pizza, Dracula’s revenge chili, or Ghostly mashed potatoes.
The key, after crafting the name, is to ensure that you add a garnish that matches with the name to give the dish great impact – adding an artichoke as an eyeball here, or a piece of hotdog as a severed toe there can be very effective. Don’t be afraid of exploiting gross recipes for Halloween. Some people actually expect it!
Screaming Halloween Dessert Recipes
Whether adult or child, most guests relish the final part of the meal – dessert. Traditional desserts would include pumpkin pie and candied apples. Cakes and pies decorated with jack-o-lantern faces are loved and can often be quite easy to create. If free-hand decorating doesn’t come naturally, there are a number of baker’s stencils found in any grocery store. Maybe ice-cream treats are desired? An ice cream slab topped with crushed up cookies can make for the beginning of a graveyard – add cookie-tombstones and finish with gummy worms.
And never forget the lure of the cupcake. They are easy to make, delicious in all respects, and there is no limit to the permutations of decorating. A wonderful aspect to the cupcake is that they can be made in advance and, as part of the celebration, the decorating can be done as a group effort just before serving. This is a sure hit for children and, even if adults don’t want to decorate, they might be happy the children are occupied while the adults have some alone time.
Halloween recipe ideas are limited only by the imagination. Search the internet and ask friends for ideas, then make them your own. Any effort put into planning a Halloween feast will certainly be rewarded.