Halloween Recipes

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30 Scarily Perfect Recipes to Serve at Your Halloween Party

Surprise guests with these sweet treats, savory snacks, and scary cocktails.

By Kelly Vaughan

Halloween Party Menus Perfect for All Kinds of Spooky, Delicious Gatherings

Dine on a devilishly delicious dinner or nibble on scary good snacks with these curated menus that will thrill guests all night long.

By Zee Krstic

Crispy Chocolate-Marshmallow Treats

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Bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder give a classic cereal bar a devilish twist. With only five ingredients and 10 minutes of prep work, who could resist baking one of these batty bars?

Candy Apples

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Candy apples are a classic fall dessert that family and friends are sure to love. Use your apple-picking haul to make the ultimate Halloween treat, complete with a sticky-sweet caramel coating.

Chocolate Cupcakes

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This recipe is the gold standard when it comes to classic cupcakes. We frosted these with Easy White Icing, but you could use our Chocolate Glaze for an even richer dessert.

Pumpkin Bars

In between bars and a crowd-friendly sheet cake is this autumnal dessert. Moist and tender pumpkin spice cake is lavished with cream cheese frosting for bars that are simply irresistible.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Cream-Cheese Filling

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Tender pumpkin-spiced cookies are filled with tangy cream cheese frosting for a delightful autumnal dessert. Kids and adults alike will love this recipe, which comes from Matt Lewis' Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.

Popcorn Balls

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No tricks, only treats here! This classic kid-friendly snack is made with just four ingredients—popcorn, melted buttered, marshmallows, and light brown sugar. Feel free to mix in additional sweet ingredients such as dried fruit, toffee bits, or chopped chocolate to these popcorn balls.

Devil’s Inferno Cake

As if devil’s food cake weren't already temptation incarnate, we've cranked up the heat with a rich and melty ganache topping and a four-alarm-fire crown. All you need to fake the flames is sugar, water, a candy thermometer, and food coloring. Let the candy cool, and sink the hardened pieces in for a dessert that'll go down in a blaze of glory.

Bacon-Wrapped Prunes

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Also known as Devils on Horseback, these sinful bacon-wrapped bites are perfect for a Halloween party hors d'oeuvre. With just two ingredients and about five minutes of prep work, they couldn't be easier to prepare either. They're best served warm, so pop them in the oven right before your guests arrive.

"Broken Glass" Cupcakes

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The recipe for the "glass" is essentially one for caramel. The trick is to cook it for a shorter amount of time than usual so it stays clear.

Darkest Chocolate Crepe Cake

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The decorative nuts are dipped in caramelized sugar and hung in bat fashion—upside down—so the sugar streams and hardens into the best candy on the block.

Inspiration and Ideas

Wickedly Good Halloween Desserts That Your Ghosts and Goblins Will Want to Devour

Looking for a sweet treat to serve on All Hallows' Eve? You can't go wrong with our spectacularly spooky cakes, ghostly cookies, and creepy brownies.

Our Halloween Cupcake Recipes Will Give You Chills

Watch what you eat this Halloween—what you eat might actually be watching you! Our creepy cupcakes are topped with monsters, aliens, spiders, mummies, and more.

25 Halloween Treat Bags and Favors Made to Delight

Baked Bow-Tie Pasta with Mozzarella

Marzipan Pumpkin Petits Fours

Popcorn on the Cob

Cherry Sheet Cake

We used frozen cherries to make a fruit-studded cake that's sweet as can be. Serve it on its own as an afternoon snack or with whipped cream for dessert.

All Halloween Recipes

Blood-Moon Punch

Guests will howl for this creative and super-festive punch. Create the glowing moon by freezing orange juice and water in a bowl, then release it and float it in a mixture of concord-grape juice, ginger soda, seltzer, and fresh lime juice. Spike grown-up ghouls' glasses with an ounce (or two) of vodka.

Apple-Peel Twigs

Faced with the usual pile of apple peels after baking a pie, our food editors came up with this clever snack. Toss apple with cinnamon sugar and bake for about two-and-a-half hours until the peels have crisped.

Shrunken Heads in Cider

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This one-of-a-kind Halloween recipe is courtesy of viewer Allison DiNatale. Granny Smith apples are peeled, cored, and halved, then receive a spooky carving. They're baked until dehydrated to give them a "shrunken" appearance. Float in large punch bowl with apple cider, lemonade, and spiced rum (if desired).

Invisible Pops

Practice your magic with these invisible Halloween lollipops. Bring corn syrup, granulated sugar, and water to a boil, then pour into three-inch circles. Press assorted candies such as licorice whips, pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds), and candy corn into each individal confection.

Ghastly Ghoulash

This rich Hungarian beef stew is a labor of love and well worth the effort. Stew beef, such as chuck, becomes super tender when cooked with plenty of red wine, diced tomatoes, vegetables, and herbs for about two hours. Serve alongside buttery noodles tossed with caraway seeds.

Jalapeño Popper Dip

Taking a cue from the creamy, spicy flavors of jalapeño poppers, this dip is sinfully good and blissfully easy. Just mix a few of the roasted chiles with room-temperature cream cheese, cheddar cheese, sour cream, garlic powder, and drained jarred pimientos, then slide it all into the oven until the casserole dish bubbles.

Ginger Pumpkin Bread

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Make this moist quick bread all autumn long. The ginger and pumpkin flavors blend together nicely in this sweet dessert bread.

Pumpkin Cookies with Brown Butter Icing

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These soft cookies are like mini pumpkin cakes—and you're guaranteed to get a bit of sweet, brown-butter-flecked icing in every bite. A combination of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger flavor the moist pumpkin batter.

Molasses Spice Cake

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An array of aromatic spices—including ground cinnamon, mace, and black pepper—make this molasses cake perfect for a fall dessert. It's frosted with a rich cream cheese buttercream, then finished with a drizzle of brown sugar glaze.

Black Lagoon Cocktail

This lemony vodka libation, garnished with black ice cubes and a licorice stick, is perfect for your Halloween party. Make the licorice ice cubes by boiling water and anise seeds together, then stir in black food coloring, pour into a mold, and freeze.

Ghost in the Graveyard Cocktail

Serve up a little black magic in the form of a cocktail made with vodka that's as dark as night—with a scoop of ghostly-white vanilla ice cream floating on top. It's rich, chocolatey, and absolutely spook-tacular.

Grilled Cheese Sand-Witches with Celery Broomsticks

Peanut Butter Tart

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The classic combination of peanut butter and milk chocolate in this no-bake dessert evokes a favorite candy, but its delicate texture will make your guests feel like sophisticated trick-or-treaters.

Guacamole with Black Beans

Classic guacamole is given a frightful twist for Halloween with black beans, jalapeño, and chipotle in adobo, which add serious heat. Dark blue corn tortilla chips are a must for dipping.

Chewy Caramel Popcorn and Pretzel Bars

This salty-sweet treat is one that both kids and adults alike will love. Plain popcorn and coarsely chopped salted pretzels are mixed together with a rich caramel and marshmallow sauce. It's an ooey-gooey, absoultely irresistible bite.

Maple-Walnut Oatmeal Cookies

Maple and oatmeal are a satisfying pair, especially when enriched with brown sugar and shredded coconut.

Bloody Brain

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Turn classic cocktail shrimp into a gruesome Halloween hors d'oeuvre that will terrify and delight party-goers. Arrange shrimp in a deep bowl, pour a gelatin-based cocktail sauce over the shrimp, and chill until set.

Haunted Black Forest Layer Cake

Topped with chocolate ganache and studded with cherries, this classic cake recipe is irresistible to all creatures, vampire or otherwise.

No-Bake Spiderweb Cheesecake

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Innocents are snared easily by a ganache spiderweb. Spun by a gumdrop spider with limber licorice-string legs, the web is draped over a dangerously addictive and creamy no-bake cheesecake. Candy Spiders make a creepy garnish.

Angel Food Cake

The secret behind this classic, light-as-air cake is one dozen egg whites. Place the finished cake in a bed of white cotton candy for an angelic presentation. Serve slices of the confection with fluffy dollops of whipped cream and glasses of Champagne for a dessert that's truly heavenly.

Peacock Tonic

The usual gin and tonic gets brushed by a peacock's teal plume thanks to blue Curacao, a bitter-orange liqueur, and green Chartreuse, a French herbal liqueur.

Fried Black-Eyed Peas

Hot from the skillet, these small fried black-eyed peas are tossed with dark brown sugar for sweetness and smoked paprika for a robust kick.

Pumpkin-Seed Brittle

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You don't need to be a candymaker to master this easy brittle recipe! Melt together butter, light brown sugar, and honey, cook until they reach a boil, then stir in pumpkin seeds and cool until set. The brittle can be enjoyed by itself or broken over ice cream.

Garden-of-Evil Punch

Beckoning jewel-toned fruits are cleverly frozen into a block of ice using a cake pan, then floated atop a Halloween punch spiked with sake and plum wine. Pomegranate juice gives the drink a very apt blood-red hue.

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