What will you be conjuring up in your cauldron this Halloween? While candy is the staple food for the spooky season, it’s not the only type of sweet you can dig your fangs into. There are hundreds of frightfully delicious, fun Halloween foods you can easily bring to life. The only question is, which one will it be? To help you choose a treat, we’ve compiled a list of the seven most popular Halloween desserts and included a general overview of how to make each one.
1. Candied Apples / Caramel Apples
There’s something about the sight of candied and caramel apples that gets everyone into the Halloween spirit. While many might confuse candied apples for caramel apples and vice versa, they are not the same treat. The key difference is their coating.
Apples dipped in a mixture of corn syrup, sugar, and water are candied apples. This mixture creates a hard coating after they have cooled off. Typically, red food coloring is added to the mixture when mixing all the ingredients. To keep the Halloween mood alive, you can use black, purple, orange, or red food coloring when making themed candied apples.
On the other hand, apples dipped in melted caramel are caramel apples. The great thing about these Halloween apples is that you can add all kinds of toppings. The most popular toppings are nuts, but you can use sprinkles, candies, chocolate drizzle, and more!
2. Pumpkin Pie
It’s not fall without pumpkins. Anywhere you go, you’ll likely see pumpkin beverages, pumpkin carvings, and of course, pumpkin pies. Like apples, pumpkins are also in season during autumn, which is why they’re popular this time of year.
Some individuals pick sugar pumpkins to make pumpkin puree from scratch. Sugar pumpkins are smaller and sweeter than typical carving pumpkins, making them ideal for desserts. You can also get puree from a can to cut down on cooking time, and there’s no shame in that. Plus, some people prefer the taste of canned pumpkin puree over puree made from scratch.
To make pumpkin pie, the puree is mixed with beaten eggs, cream, sugar, salt, and spices such as cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves to add flavor. Then the mixture is poured into a frozen pie shell and put into a preheated oven. The baking process takes about an hour, after which the pie is taken out and left to cool for a couple of hours.
For Halloween, get creative and use chocolate drizzle to draw a jack-o'-lantern, spiderweb, bat, black cat, or haunted house on the surface of the pie. You can also place spooky toppers on top to dress up your pie.
3. Spider Cookies
Spider cookies are a great option for kids. They are delightfully creepy cookies that add a bit of fun to your cuisine. Any cookie can be used as the base, but peanut butter cookies are the most popular choice. For the body of the spider, a small chocolate peanut butter cup is used. It is stuck upside down on the cookie with chocolate candy melt as glue. Then candy eyes are placed on the side of the peanut butter cup, and spider legs are drawn using chocolate candy melt. Since these Halloween cookies are quick and easy to make, they make for a fun activity with family and friends.
4. Candy Corn Cupcakes
In addition to giving out candy corn to trick-or-treaters, you can use them to make delicious cupcakes. Candy corn is one of the signature Halloween candies, so creating baked treats with them makes perfect sense.
To give cupcakes that multi-colored candy corn look, orange food coloring is added to half of the vanilla cake mix, and yellow food coloring is added to the other half. Then the yellow batter fills up the bottom half of the baking cup, and the orange batter fills up the top half. After the cupcakes are baked and cooled, add white or orange frosting and decorate with candy corn and sprinkles.
You can also opt to leave the batter as is and simply decorate with icing, sprinkles, and candy corn. You’ll still have that candy corn look!
5. Halloween Sugar Cookies
Another great Halloween food idea for kids is sugar cookies. The great thing about sugar cookies is that they’re appropriate for almost any holiday. The trick to making them suitable for Halloween is not their taste but their appearance.
Cookie cutters can be used to shape them into pumpkins, black cats, or ghosts. To decorate, add food coloring of your choice to royal icing or flood icing. Then color in your cookies and add details with the icing.
If you don’t have cookie cutters in the shape of Halloween figures, bake them as you would normally and add orange-colored icing on top. For a final touch, add sprinkles with a Halloween color scheme.
6. Halloween Candy Bark
You might find this hard to believe, but a chocolate bar can taste even better. Candy bark is basically a chocolate bar with small pieces of candy added, making every bite sweeter. Plus, it’s super simple to make!
First, melt chocolate in a double boiler and pour it into a baking pan that already has a cooking spray. Sprinkle bite-sized candy such as candy corn or crushed cookies and refrigerate for up to 45 minutes or until firm. Cut the candy bark into uneven pieces with raw edges to give it a realistic look and serve.
7. Gelatin Brain
If you want to create a scary Halloween dessert, serve up a platter of gelatin brains. This dessert is not only delicious, but it can also serve as a prop for your haunted house.
In order to make this Halloween treat, prepare a red gelatin mix, as instructed on the packaging, and add in evaporated milk and red food coloring. Pour the mixture into a food safe brain mold and refrigerate it overnight. To remove the gelatin brain from the mold, carefully shake the mold so the gelatin slowly loosens out of the mold.
