Halloween party food for kids
It's Halloween, so it's time to party! Let young imaginations run wild with a frightening feast and ghoulish games that will leave them screaming with delight
Throw your favourite little horrors a Halloween party using our guide and they're sure to have a fantastic time – although, for grown-ups, few things are more terrifying than a room full of overexcited kids! With that in mind, we've provided plenty of savoury suggestions for you plus a few healthier options to scale back the sugar – alongside plenty of sweeter treats, of course!
Find more spooky recipe ideas in our Halloween kids' recipe collection, Halloween party food recipes and Halloween recipes to make with kids.
Savoury snacks
These decorated devilled eggs are as fun to make as they are to eat – use food colouring to stain the outside and they'll look like creepy dragon eggs! You can also get the kids to help you make Halloween spider pizzas, pastry snakes or fun sausage mummy dippers. Another crowd-pleasing option is a simple Halloween cheeseboard with creepy crackers.
Healthier snacks
A batch of these brilliant healthy Halloween nachos will go down a storm, served up either with guacamole or a pumpkin hummus centrepiece on the buffet table. Or, for a different idea, try spooky stuffed peppers – they're much easier to carve than a pumpkin!
Halloween dinners
Looking for a more substantial evening meal before the kids go trick-or-treating? Our witches' brew pea & bacon chowder, eyeball pasta and impressive witch's cauldron with glow-in-the-dark goo are all suitably creepy while providing a more balanced meal.
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Sweet treats
It wouldn't be Halloween without a sweet-tasting treat, so serve up a slice of this Halloween apple & strawberry pie to your ghoulish guests, or scary Halloween jelly and slime bug cups – young ones will love them. For the brave-hearted, make our spooky surprise truffles and fill them with a mixture of trick-or-treat flavours.
Toffee apples
For something a bit special, these sleek and shiny toffee apples make a stunning centrepiece at a Halloween gathering. As the liquid toffee gets very hot, making these goodies is a job for grown-ups, but kids will be delighted to eat them. Add an extra menacing glint to the candy apples by including red or black food colouring and edible glitter in the toffee mixture.
For toffee apple enthusiasts, we also have these warming homemade toffee apples, toffee apple bread & butter pudding and spiced toffee apple cake.
These decorated chocolate apples make a brilliant alternative. Ideal for Halloween or Bonfire Night, apples are dunked into melted milk chocolate and covered in chopped nuts, sprinkles and honeycomb pieces.
Creepy cakes
For a spooky showstopper, this haunted graveyard cake will be a hit with everyone from toddlers to teens, or make our gruesome Halloween slash cake if you have a bit more time on your hands. Our ghoulish ghost cake is simple but effective, while our adorable black cat cake is the perfect feline-themed treat. This spiced pumpkin cake is full of warming seasonal spices, balancing orange buttercream with a white chocolate ghost topping.
Quick and easy options also include our popular hooting Halloween owls – a seasonal variation on butterfly cakes – these beautiful spiderweb chocolate fudge muffins and our cute Halloween cupcakes. You might also be tempted by the ease of a pumpkin traybake or these kiwi slime pies.
Halloween is the perfect time to get kids into the kitchen. See our ultimate Halloween cake collection, and for more tips, learn how to make Halloween cupcakes and see our top 10 scary cupcake designs.
Delicious drinks
Dracula's blood punch and this eyeball & hand fruit punch will help little ghosts and ghouls to quench a deadly thirst. Make your beverages extra dramatic by freezing a glove of water and using it as the ice for your punch bowl. Don't forget to accessorise your drinks with grapes, olives or lychees to make eerie 'eyeballs' skewered on cocktail sticks, as in our ominous eyeball snot-tail recipe.
Discover more Halloween drinks for kids in our Halloween mocktail recipes, and for grown-ups check out our Halloween cocktails, punches and soft drinks collection.
Ghoulish games
Costume competition
At your party you can run a few silly contests for awards like 'biggest witch's nose', 'best broom' or 'scariest fingernails' so that everyone wins a little prize. Great homemade giveaways include these eerie eyeball cake pops, toffee popcorn bark or squeamish squares.
Apple bobbing
Try spicing up traditional apple bobbing by adding some food dye to the mix to make it frogspawn green or blood-curdling red. You could also add edible glitter and fake spiders to turn it into a witch's potion or a giant's blood bath. Whoever bobs the most apples in a limited amount of time can win a small party bag of treats to take home.
Blind tasting
Putting ingredients like cold spaghetti, lychees or runny jelly in a bowl and getting blindfolded party guests to guess what they're feeling is always good, squelchy fun. Give your concoctions names like 'baby snakes', 'eyeballs' or 'goblin goo'. Remember, tailor your entertainment to your age range and make sure it stays fun for everyone!
Treasure hunt
If you're looking for something a little less scary, go on a hunt for a ghost ship's treasure chest – you could scatter clues attached to gold chocolate coins around the house leading to a hoard of ghostly goodies like cheap costume jewellery or bags of popcorn.
One of the prizes could be our ghost-shaped biscuit piñatas. They're fun to make and contain a hidden surprise centre of popping candy and edible silver balls to make little ones squeal with delight. We also have our spooky bat and spider cookies, decadent Halloween brownies and more spooky Halloween snacks to treat guests to.
Doughnuts on strings
Challenge party guests to a simple yet effective game of doughnuts on strings. Buy a pack of doughnuts and tie a string around each one. Hang the doughnuts from a line and challenge partygoers to eat their doughnut without using their hands. The winner is the first person who finishes their whole doughnut!
Go one step further and make your own Halloween-themed doughnuts – we've decorated spider webs on these chocolatey doughnuts using dark and white chocolate.
Check out more horrifying Halloween guides...
Halloween recipes to make with kids
Halloween kids' recipe collection
How to cook with kids: Halloween
How to make a Halloween feast
Healthy Halloween ideas
Halloween hub page
Do you have any terrible treats in store for your little ones? Leave a comment below...