Recipes for Halloween Snacks

Halloween is a holiday that allows you to let your imagination run wild, put on costumes to become someone else for a night and gives you license to be a little bit disturbing and sometimes disgusting all in the name of fun. Your Halloween party, despite decorations and costumed guests, will not have the full effect without some spooky treats. Some favorites that always get the guests' attention are not only creative, but also fairly easy to make. Does this Spark an idea?

Ghostwiches

This not-so-spooky Halloween snack is perfect for small children who aren't likely to eat anything that looks gross or too scary. It's a simple holiday twist on a kid's favorite. Give yourself some time to shop around for a ghost-shaped cookie cutter. They are typically available at least a month before Halloween in many stores. When the time comes to make your snack tray, make up a bunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with white bread and simply use your cookie cutter to cut out ghost-shaped sandwiches. There's nothing more to it. This is an easy snack to send to a classroom for Halloween, assuming there are no kids with peanut allergies.

Eyeball Punch

This might be the best creative approach to gory Halloween fare you have ever seen. You will need radishes, pimento-stuffed green olives, a vegetable peeler, a small scoop or tomato shark, an ice tray and the ingredients to make fruit punch. Ginger ale, pineapple juice, lemon juice, fruit punch gelatin mix, sugar and water are a good place to start, but you can make any punch you want.

The day before the party, peel the radishes, leaving small streaks of red on the outside, but mostly clean and white. Using the scoop, remove enough from the center of one side to stuff a small green olive, pimento side showing. You will realize this looks like a freaky eyeball. It might be necessary to cut down the size of the radish to fit, but it will need to go into an ice tray and be covered with water. It will take awhile, but make a few trays of these eyeballs and freeze them overnight. Put them into clear glasses or cups and use them as the ice for your red punch.

Finger and Eyeball Salad

String cheese and cherry tomatoes are the main ingredients in this party snack that can be served as a part of a tray or as a delicious salad-style appetizer that can be scooped out on a plate. All you'll need in addition to sticks of string cheese and cherry tomatoes are some shaved almond pieces. If you want to go with the salad version, you'll need extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic powder and dried basil.

For the tray, arrange the cheese sticks in a circle on a tray and place one piece of shaved almond on the end of each "finger" to make a "fingernail". Boil a pot of water and drop the cherry tomatoes in for a few seconds to loosen the skins. Peel off the skins and place the whole, skinless tomato "eyes" in a bowl in the center of the tray.
To make the salad, prepare the ingredients the same way and toss them in a mixture of olive oil, vinegar, garlic powder and basil. Adjust the seasonings to suit your tastes and transfer the coated fingers and eyeballs into a chilled bowl. You might need to replace some fingernails after tossing.