How to Make Spooky, Scary and Creative Halloween Treats

Enjoy these 5 festive Halloween desserts, and serve them at your next frightful Halloween party. If you're a creative cook, there's no end to what you can accomplish in reading recipes for complicated Halloween desserts. What's great about these five festively scary Halloween dessert ideas is that they can be done on the quick.

Create the deliciously scary dish of melon brains. It's delightfully easy to make a Halloween dessert that looks like a fresh brain. Just buy a small seedless watermelon and carve off the green outside rind, so that all you see is the white inner rind. Flatten the base of the now white melon by slicing the bottom off; this is so that it sits comfortably on a platter without rolling. Now use a toothpick to trace out lines on the white rind that correspond to where the swirls of a real brain would be. Finally, use a paring knife to cut through those tracings, revealing the pink flesh of the melon underneath the rind. The result is horrifyingly like a brain, but tastes just like watermelon.

Make apple bites. This is a fun yet simple creation that turns apples and almonds into lifelike mouths, complete with teeth. It makes a great Halloween dessert. Quarter an apple, removing the core as you go. From the skin side of the quartered apple, cut a wedge out so as to make it look like the parts of the apple skin above and below the cut-out wedge are the lips of an open mouth. Then take slivered almonds and push them into the mouth as though they were teeth. The end result is an easy-to-make creation that looks like it might eat you if you don't eat it first. Be aware that if you don't serve right away, you'll need to bathe the apples in orange juice to prevent them from browning.

Scare up some orange Jack-O-Lanterns. This one is as easy as it sounds. Cut open an orange the same way you would a pumpkin, by slicing off the top third. Scoop out the inside pulp and place to the side. On the outside of the orange, draw a Jack-O-Lantern face. Then partly fill the inside with ice cream or sherbert, and put a layer of orange pulp on top. Replace the top of the orange, and carve a small opening in the center top so that a piece of candy corn can be wedged in to serve as the pumpkin stem. Very little preparation here goes a long way to making a creative dessert.

Utilize simple ingredients for a Halloween popcorn mix, ideal for watching scary movies. Sometimes simple really is best. Take a bunch of popcorn and mix it in a bowl with peanut butter candies, candy corn, and any Halloween-themed chocolates you can find at the store. The result is surprisingly festive, given the extreme lack of work put into creating it.

Make a kitty litter box dish to sit out at your next Halloween party. Expect some strong comments on this one. Purchase a brand new kitty litter box and kitty litter scooper, and wash thoroughly. Smash up vanilla wafers or granola, put them I the box, and sprinkle tootsie rolls and chocolate chunks in the box with them. The result is horrifyingly nasty, but tastes just fine. It will be a popular and festive Halloween dessert.