Ten Terrific or Terrifying Treats for Halloween

All year long, we try to make food that is appetizing and pleasing to the eye. Then for Halloween, we reverse that and serve food that is ugly, scary, or otherwise appropriate for the holiday. While most of these treats are more cute than scary, they are all exceedingly fitting for a Halloween meal or party.

1. Tentacle Pot Pie

Meagan Reardon of Not Martha disguised pot pies as slithering monsters! Use your favorite pie recipe and dishes that can be baked, and her step-by-step crust instructions. Could this technique be used for fruit pies? I think it would be worth a try!

2. Apple Monsters

These cute Apple Monsters are all mouth! The teeth are almond slivers, and the eyes are miniature marshmallows with icing pupils.

3. Marshmallow Ghosts

Marshmallow Ghosts are simply marshmallows of different sizes and quantities skewered and dipped in a white chocolate coating. The faces are made of nuts, and the decorations were made with skewers dipped in food coloring. You don't have to make them up ahead of time, because making them would be a great activity for your party!

4. Frankenstein Finger Cookies

Gross but delicious. Frankenstein Finger Cookies are made with green dough decorated with almond fingernails and coconut hair. The bloody dip is red gel cake icing.

5. Eerie Edible Eyeballs

Britta Peterson's eyeball recipe was linked here years ago, but she has since updated and simplified it. The main ingredients are marshmallow cream and cream cheese, flavored with pineapple juice, and held together with gelatin. If you can get your guests to try the first one, they won't last long!

6. Mummy Meatloaf

Is the Mummy Meatloaf adorable or frightening? Not that it matters, as long as the kids will eat it! A meatloaf recipe is offered, but you can use your own. Wide flat noodles make the mummy wrap; if you can't find the proper size, trimmed lasagna noodles will work. The eyes are olives!

7. Pumpkin Juice

Harry Potter and his friends enjoy drinking pumpkin juice, and you can buy it bottled. But how much more fun is it to make your own? It's not necessarily a Halloween recipe, but tastes like autumn (apple and pumpkin pie, that is) and goes well with any fall or winter holiday.

8. Skull Truffles

The Skull Truffle project at Make involves making your own skull molds out of silicone. It's a wonderful guide for those who want to do that, but the relevant effect is a walnut half covered in pink candy melt to look like an exposed brain. You can buy skull molds, or if you are in a hurry, you can skip to step 15, the part about making little brains out of walnuts.

9. Frankenstein Marshmallow Pops

Sweet treats on a stick are great for keeping dirty fingers off the food and the food off the kids! Meaghan Mountford of The Decorated Cookie shows you step-by-step how to make your own frightening Frankenstein Marshmallow Pops for a ghoulishly glorious Halloween treat! Any recipe that calls for "candy eyes" is alright by me. Can you get those at the corner market? Also try her Zombie Marshmallow Pops and other Halloween confections.

10. Blood Slide Candy

You rarely see candy cigarettes for sale anymore because someone got the idea that it's not a good idea to give children candy that resembles something they should never, ever ingest. Therefore, I think it would be best to reserve these biohazard candies for adults only. Andrea Newberry was inspired by the TV show Dexter to adapt a lollipop recipe into edible medical slides containing blood samples! Yes, these are homemade, and she has complete instructions for making them.

Bonus: Fake Blood

What you use fake blood for is up to you. That said, most of the recipes at Halloween Web are basically edible. I wouldn't try using the dishwashing liquid recipe in projects that involve someone's mouth, but the rest are alright. Before using any of these on a dinner table, you might want to try a taste test.