Halloween Foods

There thousands of Halloween recipes that you can create to leave your guests screaming with delight (or sometimes disgust-- but in a good way!). Preparing creepy-looking Halloween food that also tastes utterly delicious can be a bit of a challenge... but with the right recipes, it can be a lot easier than you might think! The simple Halloween party food ideas below are the perfect thing to frighten your guests... but without scaring away their appetites!

Dreadful Halloween Desserts

Don't forget the sweet stuff! After all, it is Halloween; a holiday well known for sugar-filled feasts and spooky costumes. Here are a few of my favorite scary dessert recipes for your guests to scream over after the rest of the Halloween food is gone.

1. Creepy Cupcakes. Cupcakes always are a popular favorite at parties. To stick with the theme, add some food coloring to your cupcake batter and decorate them with colored frosting and sprinkles to make them look like jack-o-lanterns, zombies, bugs, or eyeballs. You can even use a small cupcake pan to make mini zombies or mummies if you like!
2. Witches Finger Cookies. Serve up "severed fingers" by using shortbread cookie dough to make the finger shapes, then press an almond into the end for the "fingernail." Then frost them with red icing on the ends to up the "ewww" factor.
3. Build a Dessert Graveyard. Bring out some old fashioned fall favorites such as pumpkin pie, but use crumbled Oreos for the topping. Then, stick some small fake tombstones (or cookies that look like tombstones, such as Milano cookies) on top to create the image of a grave yard!

Spooky Halloween Appetizers

While sweets and chips are great, most people will agree that small savory appetizers are probably the best choice for Halloween party food. So when planning your menu, don't focus only on spooky cakes and cookies, but on savory (and spooky) snacks your guests will actually want to eat. And that won't give them sugar shock. Need a few ideas? Here are three easy ways to make your Halloween food look just a little spookier this year.

1. Bloody Breadstick Bones. Love to serve breadsticks? Transform them for Halloween! This is so easy to do, you don't even need a real recipe. Just open a package of refrigerated breadstick dough and separate the individual rectangles. Gently lengthen each breadstick by pulling the ends. Then to create the bone shape, cut a 1 inch slit in the middle of each end. Roll the sides of the slit into little knobs so they look like the ends of a bone. Sprinkle each bone with sea salt, garlic powder, and finely grated parmesan cheese, and bake according to the package directions. Serve your breadstick bones with tomato-based "bloody" dipping sauce for a spooky but tasty bonus.
2. Use unique serving dishes. Use small pumpkins carved as jack-o-lanterns to hold serving bowls for dips, such as guacamole or bean dip. Not only do they make great bowls for your Halloween food, but they also help make the table look more festive.
3. Creepy Crawly Spiders. Make creepy "spider snacks" by sticking small pretzel sticks into personal-sized cheese rounds (like Babybels) to create the body of a spider. Add raisins, peppercorns, or pine nuts for eyes. They're too good to get grossed out by!

As you can see, Halloween party food should be anything but boring! All it takes is a little imagination to make for a great party. Plus, preparing these recipes is fun for children as well as adults, which means fun for the whole family... and it leaves you plenty of time to get into your costume! After all, you dress yourself up for this awesome holiday... so why not do the same with your Halloween food?