Fun, Gross Out Food for a Kid's Halloween Party

Half the fun of going to a kid's Halloween Party is eating all that wonderful, gross out food. Slimy maggots, quivering hearts, eyeballs, and skull heads are just the kind of Halloween fare that will have your guests wondering if they are really THAT hungry.

Snacks, Snacks, and more Snacks

Imagine walking through a dark, spooky Mad Scientists lab, filled with cauldrons of wormy, body parts and beakers of a strange, green liquid. If that isn't scary enough, what would you think if Mr. Mad Scientist himself told you to reach into the cauldron and help yourself to some munchies? Ewwww!!!!!

At our house, favorite Halloween snacks actually look worse than they taste. The secret is to keep the lights low, use lots of food coloring, and add some unusual touches to a common dish.

A favorite Halloween snack are fingernail chips. They really aren't fingernails, but a bowl of fingernail shaped Bugles corn chips. To make the illusion work, place a couple of skeleton hands in the bowl itself ~ and top the skeletal fingertips with Bugles. Serve with a nice, extra red salsa dip on the side.

How's a nice, wormy heart sound? For this snack, stir in 1/4 cup of prepared white rice into a batch of Jello Jigglers. Once the Jello has set, cut out heart shaped pieces using a cookie cutter. If you've never had a Jiggler before, these quivering treats can be eaten with the hands. These taste great, but look absolutely Gross Out creepy!

The Body Farm fruit plate is a sneaky way to add some nutrition to the snack line! Edible "body" parts can easily be created from peeled fruit. Some of our fruit carvings include: peeled grapes for eyes, ears carved from sliced apples, livers from watermelons, and bones from peeled celery sticks. To complete the illusion. add a few plastic eyes & ears to the platter, and garnish it with chilled, cooked spaghetti cut in worm sized lengths. Don't forget the dip! A bit of red food coloring in caramel dip looks downright disgusting.

Creepy eyeballs can also be made using your favorite deviled egg recipe. Follow the recipe but top the deviled yolk mixture with half a black olive in the egg socket. Gross!

For a hot dish, Monster toes are enough to turn anyone's stomach. For this spooky snack, wrap some cocktail wieners in a 1" tortilla bandage. Bake at 350 degrees for about 10-15 minutes. Before arranging on a tray, paint on some red ketchup toenails. Double Gross!

Have a sweet tooth? Set out of bowl chewable teeth. Chiclets gum are teeth shaped sweets that look like the real thing, especially when chattering teeth are placed right on top. Complete the illusion by tossing a new toothbrush in the bowl.

Tarantula cookies are another great Halloween snack. There's all kinds of cookie recipes out there; we prefer a molded chocolate cookie recipe topped with chocolate sprinkles and 8 pieces of black liquorish for legs. For something a little different, skull cookies are also wickedly good. Use the Libby's pumpkin cookies recipe on the back of the can but, instead of shaping pumpkins, create a skull head instead. Decorate the prepared cookies with white frosting, then draw in features using chocolate icing tubes.

The Main Meal

If your Halloween Party includes dinner, then the menu should include lots and lots of ghoulishly bloody, good food.

For simple eats, spaghetti and marinara sauce can make for a great Halloween dinner. Instead of meatballs though, why not stir in cooked pinky fingers instead? Add a little red food coloring to the sauce, and stir in cooked link sausage which have been cut into halves. Don't forget to throw a few plastic fingers in the serving bowl to scare your friends!

Pizza is also a terrific choice. You can either make your own, or order it out ~ but the secret here is to add something a little extra. Plastic spiders or severed plastic fingers are usually enough to do the trick.

Rather barbecue? Serve up a whopping platter of cooked baby back ribs oozing with blood. Adding red food coloring to the marinade will give it a creepy red glow. For side dishes, you can dye normal food and add some maggots (cooked rice) or plastic props. Rename the dish with the Grossest name you can think of. In the past we've served up green tinted mash potatoes mixed in with gummy worms, "Frog Eye" pasta salad tinted red with peeled grape eyeballs, and Bat Dropping baked beans completed with stirred in plastic bat wings.

Creating a spooky meal is all about illusion! Change the color, add some plastic props, and rename it something totally disgusting. With the lights dimmed, your friends won't know what to expect when they see that pile of quivering, maggoty, bloody red food. Bon Appetit!