Make gross Halloween food for your party. Your guests will be creeped out at first but once they taste these creepy appetizers and desserts, they'll be thrilled to eat them.
Halloween is the perfect time to make and serve gross-looking but great-tasting food. It's always fun to creep out Halloween party guests.
We've hosted annual Halloween parties since 2008 and our guests have come to expect creepy food on the appetizer and dessert tables.
My guests have dined on gross appetizers and desserts at our Dead Man's Diner party, our Zombie Party, and our Day of the Dead Party.
Stuffed Skulls
Stuffed Pizza Skulls are one of my most popular recipes. I shared this recipe back in 2013 and have had so many of you tell me you've made them for your Halloween party. They are so easy to make, look creepy, and taste great.
Over the years, I've had fun making other skull-shaped meals including these Enchilada Skulls along with Burrito Skulls, and Chicken & Broccoli Skulls. I hope you've had fun making some of these recipes too.
Gross Body Part Food Ideas
If you want to make something truly gross for Halloween, bake a Stuffed Pizza Brain and top it with bloody-looking pizza sauce. This brain looked so creepy on my food table. It was a huge hit at our party.
This Lung Calzone is equally gross-looking but it tastes amazing! The flaky crust is filled with Madeira Mushrooms. I love turning fancy appetizers into gross Halloween recipes. My guests loved this.
All of my party guests were excited to eat these Hand Burgers. We served them with finger fries which were finger-shaped tater tots made using potato flakes. Each fried finger even had a fingernail. You can find the recipe in my Hungry Halloween cookbook.
I always like to send my friends home with a party favor and the year of our Zombie party, we shared these creepy Finger Pretzels. Each white chocolate finger was decorated with dripping blood (red candy melts).
The year I served this Creme Brulee Pie Eyeball at our Dead Man's Diner Party, I had people lined up to get a slice. I caramelized the sugar in front of the guests. People told me it was the best dessert I had ever served.
That same year, I transformed a store-bought pumpkin pie into an Eyeball Pie. It was super easy using frozen whipped topping and colored gel icing. It's always good to make some easy recipes for my parties.
I've used a similar technique to decorate a Peanut Butter Pie Eyeball too. It's a fun way to dress up just about any pie. You can see this recipe in my Hungry Halloween cookbook.
You can also easily turn a pizza into an eyeball. This particular pizza is decorated with olives and roasted red peppers. Check out this and other Eyeball Appetizers and Desserts for more ideas.
Zombie Party Food
I thought it would be fun to add an actual face on top of an open-face sandwich. The turkey and gravy sandwich was topped with a mashed potato face. It tasted great and looked creepy and cool.
Hot Chocolate Bomb Brains can be served at a party or given as a hostess gift. When you drop them into hot milk, the bloody-looking white chocolate melts turning the hot chocolate red.
I used the same silicone brain mold to make these Cake Ball Brains for our Zombie Party. When our party guests cut into or bit into these cake balls, raspberry "blood" oozed out.
When my party guests bit into these white chocolate PB&J Brains, they found creamy peanut butter fudge inside and oozing cherry "blood". So gross yet so yummy!
These Zombie Candy Cups made a great party favor. I filled them with bloody candy bones and decorated them with dripping blood (red candy melts) and bloodshot candy eyes.
If you are looking for a fun zombie-themed recipe, be sure to check out my Zombie Popsicle recipe. Each frozen cheesecake zombie pop has raspberry blood splatters.
Cheese Skulls
You can turn cheese into a shape using a silicone mold. These Mozzarella Skull and Crossbones were fun to serve as an appetizer. They'd look great on a Halloween Charcuterie Board.
This Sugar Skull Cheese is a little more festive than creepy but it was still a great appetizer to serve at our Day of the Dead party. This would also make an amazing centerpiece on a charcuterie board.
Gross spider infested cookies
You don't have to serve edible body parts at your Halloween party. These Spider Chocolate Chip Cookies are sure to creep out a lot of your guests. They are made with my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.
I think these Spider Infested Oatmeal Cookies look even creepier than the chocolate chip version. Don't you? The spiders look so real. I actually had a party guest squeal in fear when she saw these cookies.
This creepy version of a pigs-in-a-blanket may make your party guests squirm. This Snake Snack is super creepy looking up close. I colored it for Halloween but you can make it look more realistic using more natural colors.
Turn a delicious OREO Cheese Ball into this gross-looking rat. OK, this rat isn't all that creepy-looking. It's kind of cute. But some of my party guests thought it looked pretty gross. What do you think? Could you eat an OREO Cheese Ball Rat?
If you are looking for food that looks like bugs, spiders, or other creepy crawlers, be sure to check out my Bug Party Food post. The Chocolate Roach Infested White Chocolate Popcorn is truly gross-looking and would make a great addition to any gross Halloween party food table.
More gross Halloween recipe ideas
What do you think of the images above? Some are pretty dreadful, right?
Halloween is the perfect time to share the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Usually, when one of my recipes is a flop, I hide the evidence. The food ends up the in trash and the photos are stashed under my proverbial bed, along with all things scary or bad. Who really wants to share their failures?
I know I'm a perfectionist, especially when it comes to my edible crafts. So, when I had yet another failed recipe yesterday, I wanted to toss it away, to forget about it. But, honestly, I thought the concept was great. The execution failed, and I could have done it over again, as I usually do. But after baking all week, I just didn't have it in me to make another 24 cupcakes to do it all over again.
Cupcake Cake Witch Hand
So, here it is, my cupcake witch hand. It isn't frighteningly bad, just not great. It's a very simple project, that should have turned out fine.
I arranged 24 cupcakes into a hand shape. I tinted my frosting green, which was my downfall. By the time it got to the right shade of witch-hand green, it was thin. I piped it over the cupcakes, and it dribbled down the sides of the paper liners, leaving a green sticky mess. After a little clean-up and re-arrangement of the thumb, I added some Pringle's fingernails.
In the end, it does kind of resemble a witch's hand, but I didn't feel it was worthy of its own tutorial.
Neither did any of these other Halloween failures.
Meat Loaf Feet
Years ago, I created my first Feet Loaf out of turkey for our Dead Man's Diner Party. As you can see, my picture is terrible and the color of the meatloaf is really putrid. Eww!
I recreated the Feet Loaf using ground beef and pork and made the toenails out of onions. They looked much better than the turkey version.
I snapped a quick picture (which isn't great) before they were baked but didn't have time to photograph them once they were ready to be served. I have to admit these feet really grossed out my party guests but once we cut the feet into slices and put them on the plates, people gobbled them up.
Snake Pizza
This pizza is topped with green pesto, shredded cheese, and decorated cheese slices. Although I liked the look of the simple "S" shaped snakes, the pizza looked pretty gross. It tasted great but wasn't worthy of a blog post.
Cheese Ball Hand
This bloody severed hand cheese ball, was actually really cool, in person, but my photography skills were quite lacking back before I started blogging. This blurry picture is the best one I got.
Bread Hand
I tried my hand at making creepy bread for our Dead Man's Diner party. I used my Cheese Bread recipe which tasted great but was just too lumpy. I think you could use another bread recipe and get this to work better.
Mashed Potato Brain
You may think, that this brain looks pretty good. I agree, it does. But it's made of cold mashed potatoes and once they got heated up, they were a melted mess.
It still would have been a fun addition to our zombie-themed party last year but who would want to eat cold mashed potatoes?
PB&J Eyeballs
What can I say about these peanut butter and jelly bloodshot eyes?
This was a total fail.
Ugly Eyeball Appetizers
These are even worse. I can't even believe I took pictures of them. I had made some really cool snacks for the appet-eye-ser display at our party, but these did not make the cut.
I used round tortillas to make the eyes. One set of eyes is covered in guacamole (iris) and refried beans (pupil), another is made with sour cream, refried beans, and black bean pupils, and the final eyes are made with tomatillos and black beans.
If you think these look gross, be warned that the next picture is really gross. Stop, don't look, if you are squeamish.
Bloody Skin
Nasty, right? I was going for skin and blood, and think I nailed it! But, who in their right mind would eat it or serve it? Not even me. It was too gruesome even for our Dead Man's Diner Party.
I used spring roll wrappers that I boiled like pasta. I dipped the wrappers in marinara sauce that had been strained through a fine mesh sieve to remove all the herbs and spices. It still tasted like marinara but looked like thin blood.
I splattered some of the marinara on a platter and piled the bloody wrappers on the plate. It actually tasted like spaghetti but was just too gruesome to serve at a party.
All of the recipes pictured above are featured in my Hungry Halloween cookbook. When I published that book back in 2010, I was so proud of all my creations. I still am. I just wish my photography skills had been better!
If you buy this book, just know the pictures aren't all great but the recipes are fantastic. Even the gross-looking Halloween food tastes great.
My new cookbook, Hungry Happenings' Halloween Cookbook features over 65 cute and creepy Halloween desserts and appetizers. The pictures are much better in this book and the recipes are also delicious. I hope you enjoy them all.
If you buy any of my cookbooks, be sure to leave a review on Amazon. I'd also love to see pictures of any recipe recreations. Send them to beth@hungryhappenings.
- Irresistible Sweets with Dixie Crystals® - July 13, 2024
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- OREO Penguins - December 20, 2023
Kristen says
haha I love the "eyes". Yes they do look like something else. Maybe if you use cream cheese instead of peanut butter?
Anonymous says
LOVE the skin and blood, I can't believe it didn't make it into your book!!!! I was looking for a craft to do in my child's class, and this would be soooo much fun 🙂
beth says
Seeing how many people here like the skin and blood, I do regret leaving it out of the book! I'm glad you like it.
Diana - FreeStyleMama says
Creepy...in a good way!
Bethany says
Really fun ideas! I really do like the wolf pizza, and the green hand cupcake cake is really cute!
Lisa@hooplapalooza says
hey Beth! i thought this post was about food flops?!? so where are they cuz i don't see 'em?!?!? 😉
beth says
That's nice to hear. Most of these pictures have been hiding on my computer for several years. I'm glad I published them and am happy with the reactions!
Tiffany@Fizzy Party! says
HA! I loved the gross look of some of your pictures, it's Halloween! Stuff is suppose to look gross. That meat loaf foot, fabulously gross looking. Your failures are great and it gives the rest of us hope 🙂 We too can become food diva's with enough practice.
beth says
Thanks, Tiffany. When we hosted our Dead Man's Diner party I had a blast creating super gross Halloween food. Some of our party guests thought it was hilarious, others wanted to puke! No one actually did, but it was sure fun to make people squirm a bit.
The Partiologist says
I just typed a comment and accidentally clicked and it was gone, maybe because it's a Halloween post!
I think the failures you talk about are not failures at all - they would be perfect for any Halloween party.
And the skin and blood - so gory it's perfect!
beth says
A ghost must be haunting your computer:) I really wanted to include the skin and blood in my book, but everyone I showed it to suggested I don't. I'm so happy to see so many people think it's a cool Halloween idea. Thanks!
Kalamity Kelli says
Beth - so glad you posted these - I know you are a sweet girl and perfectly human......but sometimes it appears you are perfect! Whew! P.S. - the blood/skin thing creeps me out too but I think you are supposed to be, right?
beth says
Nope, perfectly human, that's for sure, with warts and all. When I made the skin and blood thing, I was really going for the creep out factor and it definitely worked.
Brenda @ SweetSimpleStuff says
Beth ... OK they are not perfect, but you are too hard on yourself! Even your flops look pretty good 🙂
beth says
Thanks, Brenda. I know I am hard on myself:) Some days it drives me crazy.
Anonymous says
Beth, If my bests were as good as your flops, I would be beside my self with glee. The foot looks gross as a cooked foot should, the cheese hand is terrific and I would leave the spices in the blood to look like clots and add some bugs. Thank you for all your hard work and talent. Trish Butler
beth says
I know I'm a perfectionist! I did take pictures of these flops, as I thought they weren't too bad. The worst never see the camera lens and end up in the trash:) I love the cheese hand. It went over really well at our party.
MissyB_in_NJ says
I'm so glad you posted your mistakes because I was starting to think you're perfect 🙂 ! (I'm a big fan-geek.) I love all your stuff but I think that Halloween food craft is THE BEST. You have so many great ideas in your book (which I own!!), I need to go pull it out and start planning. I live in Northern NJ so Two Halloweens In a Row have been ruined by hurricanes (talk about BOOOO!!!). So this year is gonna be BIG!! Love ya, keep up the GREAT work.
beth says
Perfection can be faked on-line!!! Believe me, I have lots of flops, most of which never get photographed. Some days in the kitchen are total failures. I much prefer when things go well and I too love Halloween. I'm so glad you like my book. They were my first edible craft recipe creations to be published and I'm really proud of them.
Oh, I really hope you all in NJ have a wonderful Halloween this year. I would say good weather will be a big cause for celebration. Have a really Happy Halloween:)
Catie says
The skin and blood dish looks awesome!! I am totally bookmarking this page for that one.
beth says
I'm so geeked out that you are the second person to comment positively about the skin and blood. Maybe it should have landed in the pages of Hungry Halloween after all.
Diandra says
Okay, what was that skin and blood dish made of? We are hosting a vampire-themed murder party (not the sparkly vampires, promise!) and I would totally serve that. ^^
beth says
Well the skin and blood in this image is actually rice spring roll wrappers dipped in spaghetti sauce. I put the sauce through a strainer to remove all the chunks of tomato and spices (like oregano and basil) so the blood would just be bright red. When heated up this dish tastes like spaghetti. You could also use really thin pieces of ham or bologna for this. I love that you would serve this. I really wanted to add this idea to my book, but everyone I showed this too, was really grossed out and recommended I skip it!