Fun Halloween Cooking Ideas

Whether you are cooking a feast for adults for Halloween, or looking for some great kid-approved recipes, there are plenty of resources online for some excellent spooky recipes for All Hallows Eve. There are some basic rules that will help the meal preparation and presentation go a little more smoothly. Hopefully the advice below will help you get through your spook fest and enjoy a great dinner too!

Halloween cupcakes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most people who have a huge Halloween party will find that they will be interrupted throughout the evening with trick or treaters seeking the perfect treat. While we want to enjoy the ghosts, goblins, kings, and princesses gracing our stoop we also do not want to burn the food we are working hard to prepare. For this reason we need to select foods that require little attention during the preparation process rather than foods that are quite time consuming and attention demanding.

Crock pots are a blessing to have around on a night like Halloween. You can start the food cooking well before the little goblins begin their appointed rounds and have the dishes you've prepared kept warm while you're waiting for guests to arrive or doling out treats at your front door. You can even cook normal favorites in the crock pot or cook them on the stove and use the crock pot to keep them warm.

 Some excellent spooky crock pot ideas include spaghetti "veins". Prepare the sauce and the noodles ahead of time separately. Mix the sauce in the noodles and keep them warming together in the crock pot. Meatball eyes are another crock pot favorite. Stuff the meatballs with one stuffed olive eyeball and place in spaghetti sauce. Bat wings (which are actually chicken wings) with your favorite sauce are also excellent in the crock pot. Sloppy Joes can also be prepared and kept warm in the crock pot then served open faced over buns with small triangle cheese slices for eye and a pickle for eyeballs and a large triangle of cheese for the mouth.

(Photo credit: NatalieMaynor)

Another great Halloween cooking idea is to prepare as much as possible ahead of time. There are all kinds of frightening and ghastly goodies that can be made ahead of time and stored for the big day. Make convenient offerings such as dips that can be made cold and used for veggies, which can also be chopped ahead of time and stored in the fridge for the big day. Cookies can be baked and decorated and stored in advance. Deviled egg mice can be made earlier in the day and stored in the fridge on waxed paper.

The Internet is full of great recipe ideas for delicious and devious Halloween desserts, snacks, and treats. There are far too many to try them all. However, if you have favorite foods that are easy to prepare and a good party food you might want to search the internet for a way of making the food more appropriate to a Halloween theme. For example, you can make your own pizza a little spookier by decorating it with things such as a Jack O' Lantern face made with pizza sauce - use cheese triangles for the eyes and teeth, etc.. There are plenty of things you can do to raise the fear factor even on family favorites if you use a little creativity and give it a fancy name (like spaghetti brains or veins).

The most important thing about Halloween as a holiday is that it gives children of all ages the perfect excuse to use their imaginations and play pretend. The food you cook doesn't have to be too terribly spooky in order to be a perfect fit for the theme of the day. A few simple adjustments, and a lot of imagination can make any meal so much more Halloween worthy in the end.