3 Simple Spooky Foods for Your Halloween Party

Halloween has to be my favorite holiday. It’s the perfect excuse to cosplay up and eat distressing amounts of candy—what’s not to love? It’s also a good excuse to throw a party.

Now, I have to admit that “party” for me involves a certain level of camp and thematic design; a Halloween party’s got to be a Halloween party, if you catch my drift. It won’t do just to have party-goers in costume, oh no. The whole thing has to be playing to the theme. Remember when you were a kid and you or your friend had a superhero-themed birthday party, and everything had Spider-Man’s face plastered all over it? Maybe there were even themed activities to go along with it? That’s the level we should all shoot for here. Halloween—at least, the modern, secular iteration—is one of the few holidays when the entire point is simply to have fun, so why not do so? Let’s get cracking.

No party is complete without food. Typically, finger foods work best for parties, since they are more portable and don’t require utensils. Fortunately for all of us, the internet is a font of recipes, and a brief google search yields dozens of ideas.  I’ve tested out three on my friends and family that I’ll share with you here.

Mummy Baked Brie

There are about a dozen recipes for this out there, so feel free to use one of those if it strikes your fancy. This is how I made mine, which turned out delicious. I love the combination of brie with fruit, a little salty and sweet. Definitely make this one just before your party, so the cheese is still warm and a bit melty.

Serve baked brie warm from the oven with sliced apples and baguette.

What You’ll Need

• 1 wheel of brie
• 1 sheet of puff pastry
• Raspberry jam (or other fruit as desired)
• 1 to 2 apples
• 1 French baguette

How to Do It

1. Let the puff pastry warm enough that unfolding it will not snap it apart. Then, cut out a round that matches the size of the brie wheel you’ve chosen and several thin strips.

2. Place the pastry circle on a cookie sheet. Add a spoonful of jam to the middle, then lay the brie on top. Try not to squish the jam out the sides.

3. Lay the pastry strips across the brie, leaving a little narrow window for the mummy’s “eyes” and tucking the ends under the whole affair. You can crisscross and layer the strips, but make sure to limit the layers or they might not bake through.

4. Bake at 400°F for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. Some of the jam might leak out at this point, which is okay. Just make sure it doesn’t drip off the side of the cookie sheet.

5. Let it cool briefly before transferring it to a serving platter. Slice up the apples and baguette to serve with it. Use some of the apple to cut flat, round “eyes,” using small dabs of jam as pupils, and tuck them into the window you left in the pastry.

Spider-Guac

Another recipe that has innumerable iterations online, most of ’em prettier than mine. (Hey, it still tastes good.) If you want expert mode, inscribe a spiderweb on top of seven-layer dip for “seven layers of hell” dip.

Guacamole, a millennial’s party food.

What You’ll Need

• 4 avocados (if you have trouble finding ones that will ripen in time for your party, you can buy prepackaged avocado like Wholly Guacamole)
• 1 jar salsa, chunky
• Sour cream
• Blue-corn tortilla chips
• Spider decoration

Yes, I’m a dirty rotten cheater and use premade salsa—if you prefer to make your guacamole entirely from scratch, chopping up red onion and tomato will get you a basic salsa. From there, you can add peppers or some spices. It’s all what’s basically in jarred salsa anyway, so might as well save yourself the work.

How to Do It

1. Cut and scoop the avocados into a bowl and smash with a fork until it’s mostly smooth.

2. Mix in salsa until the flavor balance is to your liking. Then, smooth the top of your guacamole to give yourself a surface to draw your spiderweb.

3. Use the sour cream to draw your spiderweb. Sour cream does come in squeeze pouches, but if you can’t find that, you can make a piping bag using a sandwich baggie. Just spoon some of the sour cream into one corner of the bag, then snip off the tip of the corner with some scissors. I just drew the whole web by hand, but that’s not the only way to go; you can also draw concentric circles with the sour cream, then use a knife to drag lines from the center out to the edge.

4. For the final touch, add a little spider decoration (mine is made of paper) and serve with the chips.

Graveyard Cupcakes

My eighth birthday party was ghost themed, and the pièce de résistance was the coolest cake all done up to look like a graveyard, with cookie headstones and candy bones and pumpkins and Cool Whip ghosts. These cupcakes are a lot simpler than that full-size cake, but they work better as party food.

Graveyard cupcakes take the cake.

What You’ll Need

• 1 box cake mix
• 1 container chocolate frosting
• 1 package Oreos (normal, not Double Stuf)
• Mellowcreme pumpkins
• Milano cookies
• Black cake-decorating pen
• Cupcake liners

How to Do It

1. Mix up and bake the cupcakes according to the directions on the mix box. Let them cool completely before frosting or else the frosting will melt right off them.

2. While they are baking and/or cooling, prep the toppings. Put half the package of Oreos into a zip-top bag and smash until they’re an appropriate dirt-clod texture. Cut the Milano cookies in half and use the cake decorating pen to write “RIP” across the tops.

3. Once the cupcakes have fully cooled, liberally frost them. The frosting is the glue that holds the other toppings in place, so make sure you use enough.

4. Arrange a cookie headstone and pumpkin on each cupcake, then cover the rest of the exposed frosting with the Oreo “dirt.”

Other Ideas

Need more inspiration? How about . . .

• Cake pops decorated to look like eyeballs
• A charcuterie board done up to look like a body
• Cold spaghetti with a peanut sauce (looks like worms)
• Quesadillas with pumpkin faces cut into the top layer