Terrifyingly easy Halloween party food ideas

Want to whip up a ghoulishly great spread for this year’s Halloween party? Use these tricks to make treats that are quick, easy and cheap.

Dressed up drinks and nibbles

A vivid green witch’s brew is simple to make using lime cordial – or perhaps crème de menthe if you’re after something a little stronger. But both are love ’em or hate ’em flavours. So, a crowd-pleasing punch using cranberry juice, lemonade and the obligatory gummy worms might well be the way to go. If your ghoulish get together is for adults rather than kids, add a slug of gin or vodka.

If you want things to be a little more sophisticated – because, hey, witches and demons like the finer things too – a blackberry-topped bramble cocktail is happily appropriate for the season, while cranberry and brandy can be paired with bitter lemon and mint to make a zingy, ruby-red refreshment that’s low on effort and spend.

For nibbles to serve with your choice of poison, make the most of that gutted pumpkin and roast the seeds in a spice mix like barbecue, Cajun, or fajita. Baking your own vegetable crisps is also really simple and will inject some festive purple and orange hues into your snack offering.

Nick Beardshaw, head chef at Kerridge’s Bar & Grill, has a great canapé idea: devilled egg eyeballs. “Just scoop out the yolk of some halved hardboiled eggs, make a devilled egg mayonnaise to fill the hollow with, and top with a black olive to look like the pupil of the eye.”

Super simple cheese straws are also perfect for Halloween, says food blogger Megan d’Ardenne, who suggests turning them into puff-pastry snakes. To make 15, unroll a pack of readymade puff pastry and sprinkle 50g grated cheese (cheddar’s fine) and 3 tablespoons of poppy or chia seeds over half of it, then fold the other half over the filling. Cut into 15 long strips then twist each one before pressing down at one end to create your snake heads. Add pumpkin seeds for eyes and a sliver of red pepper for the tongue and brush each snake with beaten egg before baking at 220C/200C Fan/Gas 6 for 12–15 minutes.

Scarily good savouries

If you’re planning a kids’ party, for the main event just stick to those usual party food staples and give them a quick Halloween makeover. For instance, you could make pizzas (to save time go for an easy no-yeast dough) and create spooky features with the toppings. This is something that children’s cookery author Annabel Karmel suggests, with her favourite designs being mummies and monsters (pictured).

To speed up the prep time, Karmel suggests swapping regular pizza dough for a 325g pack of ready-rolled puff pastry and using a large round cutter (or an upturned saucer that you can cut around) to create kid-size pizzas. Her easy topping is a made from 140g/5oz passata, a crushed garlic clove and 1 tablespoon sundried tomato paste. Mix together, spread onto the bases and sprinkle with 100g/3½oz grated mozzarella before baking at 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6 for 18–20 minutes. Once they’re out, you can create the spooky faces using pitted black olives, green and red peppers slices, 50g sliced ham, 100g firm mozzarella, sliced into strips (for the mummy bandages) and salad leaves.

She also suggests you use the same format for making open sandwiches. Use cucumber and cream cheese for a mummy theme: spread 1 tablespoon cream cheese onto a slice of white bread then take a quarter of a small cucumber and shave into ribbons using a vegetable peeler. Then use a sliced black pitted olive for eyes.

Alternatively, Karmel suggests an avocado Frankenstein design, where you top a slice of bread with mashed avocado (half an avo should be plenty) and use sliced black pitted olives for the hair and eyes.

For more grown-up bread toppers, try pumpkin rarebit on toast, says Beardshaw. “Chop a crown prince pumpkin and cover with foil, then cook until it’s soft. Remove the skin and the seeds then mash or purée the pumpkin flesh.

“Make a bechamel by melting 50g/1¾oz butter in a pan and stirring in 50g/1¾oz flour to form a paste. Allow that to cook for a minute or so, then slowly whisk in 300ml/½pt milk. Once you have a smooth sauce, fold in 200g/7oz of the pumpkin purée and 100g/3½oz strong cheddar. When the cheese has fully melted, add a good splash of Worcestershire sauce and tabasco, along with a pinch of salt before allowing to set in the fridge. Spread a ½cm/¼in layer over toast and grill until golden. Cut spooky shapes out of the bread and use pumpkin seeds to create eyes and teeth perhaps, for the proper Halloween effect.”

Or how about using bread to make mummified hot dogs? “Remove the crusts from some sliced white bread and use a rolling pin to roll it out as flat as possible,” says Beardshaw. “Cut this into 1cm strips and wrap around some mini frankfurters to create a mummy effect. Brush with melted butter and bake at 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 until golden and crispy.”

If your Halloween feast is more of a sit-down affair, then go for the tastes of the season. The Hairy Biker’s sausage, chicken and pumpkin traybake requires little prep and is a hearty, filling dish using in-season veg and affordable cuts of meat.

Purple beetroot burgers would also be apt – especially served with orange sweet potato chips for a festive colour scheme. You could even turn your fries into witches’ fingers by adding some roasted red peppers as fingernails.

Tricks for sweet treats

For centrepieces, a no-cook chocolate cheesecake is simple to whip up. Try Lorraine Pascale’s and decorate it with a white-chocolate spider’s web. It’s super simple: just pipe concentric circles with the white chocolate, working from the centre of the cake outwards. Then, using a toothpick, drag lines from the centre to the outside, all the way around.

Another easy (albeit a slightly sticky) way to get that cobweb effect is with white marshmallows. Gently melt them in a pan then pull apart while gooey to make the strands of the web. This is ideal for the top of a chocolate traybake.

With the help of a spooky-shaped cookie cutter and a handful of store cupboard ingredients, you can have a plate full of biscuits in under half an hour. Some simple water icing and food colouring is all you need to decorate them. And almost as simple to make are these colourful monster cookies, which don’t require any special cutters or kit at all.

Want a traditional treat? Toffee apples are surprisingly speedy to put together, or this spiced pumpkin loaf cake – which happens to be vegan – is perfect made with store bought pumpkin purée to save time.

If you have time to spare

Want a big centrepiece statement and don’t mind putting in a tiny bit more effort? Let us introduce you to this ghoulishly good orange and black marble Halloween cake. It’s finished with a gothic black buttercream and melted candle drip. Who says Halloween can’t be chic?

Originally published October 2023