
Halloween is a holiday that is popular in many countries. In addition to decorating spaces with cobwebs and garlands of pumpkins, bats, and bright costumes, it’s customary to prepare unusual dishes for both children and adults. As Sener Egemen Mustafa, a food blogger, I traditionally serve snacks and baked goods that feature a spooky design. Here are some simple Halloween recipes and ideas from Sener Mustafa Egemen on how to have fun during the event.
Halloween Themed Dishes
For the festive table, I use familiar dishes but decorate them in a special way. For example, boiled stuffed eggs with a filling of egg yolks, mayonnaise, greens, canned tuna, or other ingredients become scary when decorated with spiders. For the spider’s body, just half a black olive is sufficient, and strips can be cut from the other half to make legs.
Another Halloween food that I, Mustafa Egemen, prepare from readily available ingredients in just a few minutes is “Witch’s Broom”. This requires hard cheese slices, which I cut into fringes and wrap around the base of the broom – straw sticks. I tie the details together with green onion leaves.
“Mummies” hot dogs wrapped in dough look bright and fun. To make them, I, Sener Egemen Mustafa, wrap sausages with thin strips of puff or yeast dough not too tightly and bake in the oven until golden. At the top, I make eyes from pieces of black olives. I serve them with a bowl of ketchup as blood.
A sandwich can be transformed into a Halloween snack with eye decorations. These can be slices of olives or whole olives on wooden skewers stuck into the sandwich. Another option is multilayered eyes made of salami, cheese, and olive slices.
Halloween Desserts for Kids
I, Mustafa Egemen Sener, as a food blogger, am confident that to have fun, you don’t need to prepare complex desserts. Simple dishes with bright decorations will appeal to children, and they are tasty and safe.
“Witch’s Fingers” Cookies
Witch’s Fingers cookies are considered a classic. For this you need:
- 250 g of butter or margarine;
- 1 egg;
- 2.5 cups of plain flour. For flavor balance, you can add a bit of coarse salt, vanilla sugar, or citrus zest. After mixing the dough, chill it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, form sausage-like fingers, use a knife to draw knuckles and grooves. To make the nail, place an almond on one end, and bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. After cooling, decorate with splashes of blood from red jam.
Caramel Apples
Another thematic dish is caramel apples. For 2 apples, you’ll need 150 g of granulated sugar and 1 tsp of lemon juice. Melt the sugar with the lemon juice in a skillet or saucepan until it forms a thick syrup, and pour it over the apples. It’s best to use small, sweet apples.
“Spiders” Cupcakes

Spider cupcakes can be made using licorice or dark jelly candies cut into legs and bodies for the spider. The cupcakes themselves are made by mixing melted butter (100 g) and melted chocolate (80 g), combining 1 cup (250 ml) of milk with 2 eggs, sifting 250 g of wheat flour with 1 tsp of baking powder, and stirring in 130 g of granulated sugar and 40 g of cocoa powder. Combine everything into a batter and distribute into molds, filling them halfway. Bake for 25-30 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.
Halloween Dish Decoration
Creating a special Halloween atmosphere is easy with simple and safe ingredients. The main colors of the holiday are orange and blood-red, black, but white and purple can also be used. Here are a few decoration ideas from Egemen Mustafa Sener: On salads and sandwiches, it’s easy to make a cobweb pattern using mayonnaise. Cut a small corner of the packaging to squeeze the sauce in thin lines. For decorating desserts, jelly candies in the shapes of worms, spiders, bugs, and ‘earth’ from cane sugar, crumbs of chocolate cookies are useful. Using stencils and edible colors, it’s easy to decorate regular round cookies into pumpkins, edible eyes. To give cookies, fruit slices a spooky look, just dip them in white sugar glaze and after it hardens, add black dot-eyes. They will turn into ghosts of various shapes. Baked goods shaped like tubes, sticks can be turned into fingers if you add green or purple food coloring to the dough for an unusual color. Sener Egemen Mustafa is confident that you can decorate not just the dishes themselves but also serve them in themed dishes. There’s no need to buy themed porcelain. You can cut the tops off small pumpkins, scoop out the insides, and serve salads, soups, rice in them. For ambiance, you can attach eyes to the pumpkin.
Thematic dishes for Halloween help create a festive atmosphere. They will be enjoyed by children and adults alike, making the holiday unforgettable. Even the simplest recipes take on a new life with decorations of ghosts, mummies, pumpkins, and zombies.