No no no no. It’s not too late to throw your kids a Halloween party. Really. Get some jelly, some cheese, crackers, pasta, noodles —all it takes is creative assembly and some cheeky, cheesy re-naming of existing meals to make it all fit the theme. Channel your inner ‘bugs and snails and puppy dog tails’ eight-year-old boy for inspiration.

My brothers used to call scrambled eggs and sauce ‘bloody brains’, sausages or braised carrots were fingers and toes, simple porridge was ogre-bog-slime, bread bitten in a particular way yielded vampire teeth … you get the drift. It could have grossed us out, but somehow it always made meals even more delicious.
So get your kids to make witches’ hats out of newspaper (ask Auntie Google for instructions). They can also help you prepare and construct practically every dish you want to make. Some of these recipes and ideas are adaptable to adult parties too but let’s warn you, this ain’t gonna be no posh soiree.
And yes, we know the hand is spookily real — and it was delicious as well! Boo to you too!
You can start a conversation with the author about food at http://loveinthekitchenlaughteratthetable. blogspot.com

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This one is a classic. You can also use subja seeds to make frog spawn, vermicelli to make worms — actually, thinking about it now, my childhood phobia of the classic falooda suddenly makes sense to me. Bring it for Halloween!
Ingredients:
Litchies
Green and black grapes
Red or green Jell-o

Method:
Make Jell-o and leave to set. Stuff litchies with red (if you’re using green jell-o) or black grapes. Count at least two ‘eyes’ per person. Pop them into the semi-set jello. When the jell-o is set, spoon and serve with an eyeball popping out to equally disgusted and impressed kids.
For adults: Make jello shots with one eyeball in each shot glass. Using un-flavoured gelatin you can also make martini shots and replace with a pearl onion stuffed with an olive or olives stuffed with pimentoes for eyes.

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Freaky Fingers (and Terrifying Toes)

Ingredients:
1 packet of chicken frankfurters
1 green pepper or corn niblets
Prepared fettucine or a lasagna sheet cut in strips

Method:
Boil the sausages and then saute them lightly on the pan. If the skins split a little, all the better — they will look more gruesome. Cut the sausages to about 1.5 inches in length from either side. Reserve the middle bits for another recipe. Wrap the end of the sausage that you cut, leaving the ‘finger’ like bit exposed. Now using a peeler, peel some ‘fingernails’ off the green pepper or with a sharp knife, halve a fewcorn niblets and place them on the sausages. You can make this look a little more gory by spattering with some ‘bloody’ ketchup.

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The Jack-o-Lantern Display

We were going to carve a butternut squash to make a lantern but my mother came up with a quicker, less labour intensive idea. Get the largest green peppers you can find. (We found yellow peppers far too thick skinned and the red ones weren’t translucent enough.) Slice the top off the pepper. Now draw in pen your scary face. Carve it out. Place a tea light candle inside and gently put the sliced off ‘lid’ back on leaving a little space for the candle to breathe. You may need to flatten the bottom of the pepper out so it stands. Looks gorgeous and as the peppers roast from the inside it also smells delicious. Do not eat!

Bloodied Popcorn

Ingredients:

Popcorn
Dried herbs
Butter
Ketchup or tomato soup powder

Method:

Pop the corn. Now, this is a really nice way to butter and flavour popcorn. Spread a mix of butter and ketchup on the inside of a bowl. Put the just popped corn into the bowl and stir. You will be able to evenly season without the nasty clumps. Serve immediately cos this will get soggy. Use paprika for adults.

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Make ‘stencils’ for your ghosties if you’re not confident of doing this free-hand. Cut off the ends of the bread and using scissors, cut your slices of bread into sheet ghost shapes. Mix the chopped herbs and garlic with a little salt and olive oil and leave to stand for 10 mins. While they’re standing, pre-heat an oven-grill and toast your ghosties slightly, not too much. Take them out and brush them with the oil from your herb mix and then divide the herb mix across the 8 ghosties. Cover each with a slice of cheese, ‘tucking in’ the sheets under the ghostie outline. Put into the grill again and toast until the cheese is just a bit soft. Remove. Decorate with ghostly ‘eyes’ made of olives and maybe a screaming maw (you can make even scarier eyes of bits of tomato or red pepper). Serve immediately.
Note: You can also make zombies by cutting out ‘men’ with a gingerbread man cutter and putting baked beans on toast instead. Kids will just love ripping the heads off and eating the beans in a kids vs scary food contest.
For adults: Posher cheese, sharper herbs (oregano?), Tabasco sauce, jalapenos — these all will go brilliantly with the ghosties. For added effect, create a bog-slime dip (guacamole) or a witches brew (tomato salsa or soup) for a healthy and simply horrific thing to plunge your ghosties into.

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Monster Cookies

Fans of the cookie chomping Cookie Monster will love turning the tables. Again, this recipe is super adaptable and something the kids will just love making and then eating. The fact that this involves playing with spreadable icing or cream cheese will make the making just a small prelude to the feasting.

Ingredients:
Readymade cookies or digestive biscuits
Green icing
To decorate: Licorice strips, silver sugar balls, red cherries

Method:
Mix green food colouring into icing (this was the really scary bit — how much food colour we had to use. Make sure kids don’t overdo these. Coloured tongues are cute but a sign that too much colour has been ingested, even if it is edible.). Decorate into different sorts of monsters. You can put them on tiny paper plates and give kids extra strips of licorice to make arms and legs.
For adults: Use flavoured gourmet crackers, cream cheese and decorate with salmon, olives, ham. Or if you’re hung up on green — use some pesto.