Halloween Party Foods & Cakes
- Gross foods are designed to look like things most people would not want to eat. Serve a dirt cake made by covering a devil's food cake with chocolate sandwich cookie crumbs and gummy worms. Make a gelatin dessert in the shape of a brain with a specialty mold. Serve a pair of vanilla ice cream scoops topped with a black miniature chocolate cookie in the center of each for a pupil and a drizzle of strawberry sauce to make the appearance of blood-shot eyes.
- Stick with an orange and black theme for a more sedate Halloween celebration. Serve chicken wings with Buffalo hot sauce, which is orange in color, for an appetizer. Heap the chicken wings in a black cauldron or soup tureen to fit the Halloween theme. Serve an orange squash soup with blue corn tortilla chips on top as a garnish or black squid ink pasta topped with cooked carrots. Dark chocolate cake or cupcakes with orange icing and orange sherbert fill out the dessert portion of the meal.
- Feature pumpkin in every dish on a Halloween party buffet for a cocktail party setup. Serve dip for chips and vegetables on a buffet table in hollowed out pumpkins. Use a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter to cut out pumpkin shapes from tortilla chips and bake the chips for serving with cheese dip or salsa. Make or buy pumpkin doughnuts to serve as a traditional Halloween treat. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies or pumpkin custard set out on individual serving plates on a buffet table provide another sweet treat.
- Some foods are meant to frighten. Dim the lights or use only candlelight to make it harder to see what the food really is. Use cards in front of each dish to display its scary name to add to the atmosphere. Prepare a batch of plain spaghetti noodles and serve with a card calling it "hair." Label a bowl of peeled grapes "eyeballs." Fill a disposable glove with water and tie the end. Freeze it overnight until the water freezes solid. Remove the glove and drop the hand-shaped ice cube into a bowl of punch to keep it cold. Serve breaded mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce labeled as "fingers and blood dip."
