Ghoulish gourmet

What to serve at your Halloween party? It's an age-old question. Although some take the easy way out by stocking up on pizza and chips, a true Halloween lover takes the time and effort to make some specially-made creepy cuisine. Just as we offered up printable Halloween decorations last year, here are some free recipes:

Britta Peterson, author of Eerie Elegance: How To Host A Haunt And Other Fabulous Frights offers up lots of great recipes on her website, good for both Halloween and Harry Potter-themed parties. My personal favorite is the bleeding heart recipe, as it seems like a tasty treat and great special effect.

The Google Books preview of Brekka Hervey Larrew's Wormy Apple Croissants and Other Halloween Recipes offers up the title recipe, Witchy Wands and Edible Eyeballs.

The preview for The Halloween Handbook by Bridie Clark, Ashley Dodd and Janette Beckman offers many recipes. Said recipes include (but aren't limited to) Meat and Vegetable Vertebrae, Witches' Hats and Dirt and Worms Pie.

For those serving very young guests, Baby & Toddler Meals for Dummies by Dawn & Curt Simmons (along with Sallie Warren) might be a worth a look. Recipes like Frightful Brownies and Green Witch Punch await you.

Donata Maggipinto and Richard Jung offer up a recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds in Halloween Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family.

Halloween: Customs, Recipes, Spells by Silver RavenWolf has material that's...how should I put this...a bit metaphysical. Still, one can easily ignore all the "new age" parts of the recipes to make old fashioned Samhain goodies like All Souls' Day Bread and Divination Doughnuts, or modern goodies like Witches' Brew and Sugar Snakes in Graveyard Dust.

For those looking for more than just sweets, Ed Morrow's The Halloween Handbook has recipes for Jack-o'-Lantern Pizza and Witch Handwiches.

Finally, Lesley Pratt Bannatyne's A Halloween How-To: Costumes, Parties, Decorations, and Destinations provides a wealth of recipes. So much so, that I've decided to just link you to the first page of the recipes chapter and let readers scroll through by themselves to find stuff that interests them (but I will give a few suggestions). Although this is true for many of the other links in this entry, A Halloween How-To went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to recipe ideas. It's got everything from variations on pumpkin seed recipes to Halloween Jell-o and Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls.


Be sure to stop by tomorrow for some Halloween cocktail recipes...