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[AnnMumsnet]

Does your family like to put a spin on family meals around Halloween? What spooky meals / snacks do you like to serve up the week of Halloween to help get everyone in the mood?

Please share all your budget busting Halloween themed food recipes tips and tricks - do you put plastic spiders in jelly, make pancakes in the shapes of witches hats or roast a pumpkin to create a delicious soup that feeds everyone? Maybe you have a ghoulish green smoothie you bring out or a spooky way of serving up fruit and veg?

Add your best Halloween meals, snacks and drinks to this thread and you will be entered into a prize draw where 5 MNers will each win a £50 Lidl voucher. Any photos are very, very welcome (and may be used by Lidl elsewhere, so please only post them if you're happy with this) – and of course, we’d love to hear what your little food critics think too!

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I do pumpkin soup (really butternut and carrot to make it properly orange), spaghetti squids (hot dogs with black rice noodles pushed in and then cooked) and ghoulish cupcakes - marshmallow melted on the bottom, pushed on and then a face drawn on with food colouring.
Last year I did bugs in jelly by using jelly sweets and green and orange jelly, but the sweets had a weird texture in spite of looking great

I made a red jelly last year with sweety eyes and jelly worms in it. It was a hit. But sadly I didn't get any photos. I think this year I will do the same but use lime jelly with a touch of green food colouring to make it really green. I think I will serve it in a witches cauldron.

At our halloween party last year we also served cream of veg soup with rolls and hot dogs. I found that really easy to serve to a crowd and it went down really well. Didn't break the bank either.

(Hoping Lidl have the scary doorbells in again this year as ours was very popular last year.)

I'm really rubbing at making scary looking food, but one time I did hotdogs with a piece of onion on the end for a scraggy fingernail and loads of tomato sauce blood. Looked quite good.

I usually just do a great big pot of chilli and jacket potatoes for when the DC are back from T & T ing.

I might get some inspiration from this thread.

Oooh chilli and jacket potatoes. I think that is what I will do this year! :)

Mummy dogs. Hot dogs, with the make-your-own-croissants dough, cut into strips, and wrapped around. Really easy, very tasty, looked fab, and you can prep them earlier in the day, and chill, then just pop them in the oven when you want them.

Oh, and pumpkin vomit dip! It's just store bought dip and vegetable fingers.

We decorate biscuits to look like pumpkins, and make fingers out of hot dog sausages.

Something easy like hotdogs and maybe some apples for bobbing, but no really scary themed food.

I stuff olives with cream cheese and tell my DS that they're monster eyes. We also do chopped up hotdogs with spaghetti pushed through, but we call them spiders.

Last year we made the trolls teeth from the Mumsnet recipe video. They were great because DS could help make them and they did look quite effective! He has watched the videos and wants to make the shortbread fingers this year.

We make cupcakes and Halloween shaped biscuits with orange and black/ green icing. That's as far as we go!

Limeade - zombie blood
Tinned spaghetti and toast - worms in blood with gravestones
Mint ice cream in a cone dipped in dark chocolate - bogey ice cream in a witches hat

Cheap and easy meal but themed, my mum started it off with us and it's been passed down. It wouldn't be Halloween without the above menu

Shark attack watermelon!

Carve a wedge out of the melon for the mouth, making jagged teeth. Fill with chunks of fruit & fizzy fish sweets...

We're in a hot country so watermelons are cheap all year round .

I must say, I do a good spread for Halloween. The kids all seem to start at my house before going Trick or Treating.

My most effective tip is to cut hot dog sausages to look like fingers, served with blood and puss (ketchup and mustard).

Ice cream witch faces - a big round scoop of ice cream, make a face with jelly sweets and add shredded wheat hair and an upside down cone for the hat.

Home made bread sticks shaped into bones, dip in salsa to make it look bloody.

We love Halloween in our house! We always have a buffet dinner with lots of yummy creepy food. Jelly filled with scary surprises, decorated cakes and lots more.

Gingerbread men iced as skeletons and mummies
Pumpkin soup served in the hollowed out pumpkin as a cauldron
hot dog 'severed fingers'
Rice crispy cake 'brain'
Hot dog section spiders with spaghetti legs
Lidl BBQ ribs for an impressive pile of bones

Gingerbread biscuits shaped as spiders / witches / cats

Pumpkin soup

Love the 'pumpkin vomit' idea above - gross but definitely fun on Halloween!

I make spider web cup cakes which are always a hit at Halloween parties!

Zombie gingerbread men were a hit here, just made them lopsided, legs or arms cut off or moved etc. I've seen actual cutters for them since, but it's good to be creative.

Green or red jelly with lychees for eyeballs is fun, and I like hot dogs baked with a spiral twist of shortcrust pastry around them for bandaged fingers.

Gingerbread men with heads and legs missing.
Fairy cakes with a chocolate button on top with legs drawn out the side to look like spiders/
Spaghetti and pesto as worms.

Now that children are getting older I have to work at this. To this day I remember when the nursery school dyed the milk green for Halloween. I was three and am now 33- so it made an impression.

I get a couple of things out of the pumpkins that we carve - pumpkin pie with the insides from one and pumpkin soup with the insides of the second, then the stringy bits / seeds from both are put in bowls and dyed with red or green food dye to be bowls of brains, I chuck in plastic or bagged treats and the brave trick-or-treaters get to dig through brains for their treats!

I've got a brain shaped jelly mouldy so we do brain jelly with jelly worms in it.

We're going to make pumpkin cheesecake streusal, punch mocktail with floating hands (plastic gloves filled with ice and shuved in the freezer. Possibly some spare ribs and intestines (sausages still strung together) covered in a red bbq sauce!

Halloween is all about the start of soup season for me.

Last year I made butternut squash into minion decorations instead of more traditional pumpkins. Then used them for soup after halloween.