Feed the Ghouls

Halloween food that looks like the photo, tastes like real food, and is still safe to eat at the end of the party.

This is a Halloween cookbook for one night of the year: an early dinner so everyone is fed before trick-or-treating, a party table, the sweets, and the drinks. It is for anyone cooking for Halloween, including people who have never made party food before. Every step says what to do, why, and what it should look like.

Why it's different

• The spooky part is drawn step by step. Halloween food usually goes wrong in the shaping, not the cooking: faces fill in, eyes slide off, mummies unwrap in the oven. Each recipe has a three-panel drawing of its trick (how to cut matching jack-o'-lantern eyes, wrap a mummy, drag a spider web, pipe a ghost, get caramel to stay on an apple), and a "what you see / why / next time" table.
• A photo of every recipe, with numbered notes on the details that make it look right.
• Real food, not ordinary recipes with monster names. 12 of the 22 recipes are savoury, including four quick dinners for before trick-or-treating.
• Three ready-made Halloweens. A family night for 4, a children's party for 12 and a grown-ups' party for 20, each with a menu at the right amounts, a timetable that starts days ahead where it can, and a shopping list. The grown-ups' plan runs nine recipes through one oven.
• Safe on the table. Party food sits out, so every recipe says how long it can stay on the table and how to keep it hot or cold. The book also covers raw dough, caramel apples, dry ice in punch, unpasteurized cider and food for children under 4.
• Every recipe says what it tastes like, what it makes and how many it feeds, the hands-on and total time, the oven setting four ways (°F, °C, °C fan, gas), what it contains, which steps children can do, how far ahead you can make it, and swaps (vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free and others where they work).

The 22 recipes

5:00 pm, before the doorbell: Jack-o'-Lantern Quesadillas, Cauldron Chili with Tortilla Bats, Stuffed Pepper Jack-o'-Lanterns, Pumpkin Soup with a Spider Web

7:30 pm, the party table: Mummy Dogs, Deviled Egg Spiders, Pumpkin Cheese Ball, Graveyard Layer Dip, Veggie Skeleton with Ranch Dip (with a build-it plan), Witch Finger Breadsticks, Eyeball Caprese Skewers, Black Magic Wings

8:30 pm, sweets and bakes: Graveyard Dirt Cups (with homemade chocolate pudding), Spiderweb Brownies, Meringue Ghosts, Homemade Caramel Apples, Crispy Rice Pumpkins, Witch Hat Cookies, Spider Cupcakes, Monster Popcorn

All night, drinks: Swamp Punch, Witches' Brew Hot Cider (both alcohol-free unless a grown-up adds something to their own cup)

Also inside

• How much to make per guest, with a worked example
• The kit (nothing special: no moulds, cutters or airbrush), and which recipes need what
• Three pages of tricks used all through the book: faces and eyes, Halloween colours and melting chocolate, the candy thermometer, and piping with a zip-top bag
• A "when it goes wrong" clinic, a leftovers chart, cut-out templates (jack-o'-lantern face, bats, mummy strips, witch finger), 22 printable table cards that list what each dish contains, a recipe finder (make ahead, served hot or cold, kids can help, vegetarian, gluten-free) and conversions with US and UK words

What you download

• Feed the Ghouls (71 pages, PDF, US Letter, in colour, with bookmarks and a contents page).

Good to know

• Amounts are in US cups and spoons with grams or millilitres beside them; British names are printed under any ingredient that differs. UK readers use medium eggs where the book says large.
• You'll need an oven, two sheet pans, parchment, zip-top bags and an instant-read thermometer; a candy thermometer for the caramel apples, and an electric mixer for the meringues.
• Between them the recipes use wheat, milk, eggs, soy, tree nuts (almonds, optional), peanuts (optional), fish (Worcestershire sauce) and sesame. Every recipe lists its own.
• Safe cooking and holding temperatures follow US Department of Agriculture guidance.
• The pages are US Letter size. On A4 paper, print with "fit to page"; print the templates page at actual size.
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.