The Easiest Festive Halloween Dinner
The easiest Halloween dinner ideas that are delicious, just a little spooky, and super simple. These Halloween dinner recipes will have you well-fed and ready to get out trick-or-treating!
You know how real life sometimes gets in the way of being the kind of fun parent you want to be?
Halloween dinner has felt like that to me for many years.
I saw a million amazing Halloween dinner ideas online, but it all felt so complicated and so we did basically nothing.
I didn’t want to make a bunch of things that no one would actually eat and that took me forever on a day that’s always pretty busy getting everything ready for trick-or-treating.
Plus, who needs a Halloween dinner when you could just eat three pounds of candy on an empty stomach instead?
Finally, a couple of years ago, I thought, “What I need to do is just pick something EASY that I can do every single year, that is quick to make, that everyone will eat, and that feels festive.”
This is what we’ve done for our Halloween dinner for the past 3 years and it’s become a very easy part of our Halloween celebrations that everyone looks forward to.
My goal, like in pretty much ever aspect of my life is “Low Effort, High Impact” (I feel like I just gave you a peek into my soul with those four words).
Here is our Halloween Dinner Menu:
- Grilled cheese sandwiches with a Halloween shape pressed in the top of the bread
- Blood soup (tomato soup – I always use this recipe because, frankly, it’s the best tomato soup ever).
- Apple monster teeth
- Root beer with dry ice
This is such a great Halloween dinner for our family because I can make the soup ahead of time and just warm it up at dinner time.
As far as making the Halloween grilled cheese goes, the secret is good bread (this one is a brioche bread and I also love a good sourdough) and mayonnaise.
I spread a thin layer of mayo on the inside of each slice of bread and then put a piece of cheese in the middle.
I let the girls each choose a Halloween cookie cutter and carefully press it into the top of the bread – you don’t want it to go all the way through, you just want it pressed into the top. Once you grill your sandwich, the outline won’t toast with the rest of the bread because it’s pressed down, so you’ll get a spooky outline on the top of your sandwich.
Obviously, recognizable shapes are the best (these 99 cent cookie cutters are some of my favorites) and it’s so fast to decorate a whole batch of sandwiches.
While I grill up the sandwiches, the girls love assembling the apple monster teeth.
If you’d rather do something in the slow cooker, I’d do this white chicken chili and call it Bone Bits Soup and serve it with some pumpkin muffins.
Setting a Halloween Dinner Table
For me the most fun part of our Halloween feast is setting the table (I wrote a whole post about it here), but here are the basic components for me:
- A dry ice witch cauldron. The centerpiece is a big stock pot (mine looks like this, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that expensive!) and I put a couple of good-size chunk of dry ice in it and then pour root beer over the top, right as we sit down for dinner. That alone is so much bang for your buck. Even if you served cold cereal for dinner, you’d feel festive with that dry ice floating all over your table.
- A runner down the center. I LOVE a table runner for any occasion and I bought this felt spider web one a couple of years ago for Halloween. It’s just the perfect touch and worth every penny (which was only about $13 worth of pennies).
- Black and white dishes. Our regular dishes are basic white (thank you, IKEA) but I also have a very cheap set of black dishes we bought at Walmart about 8 years ago and they’re perfect for setting a Halloween table. I only have four place settings, so I alternate them with the white ones (so a black bowl on a white plate and then a white bowl on a black plate, etc).
- Candy corn. I think candy corn is the most festive candy ever and it’s the easiest decoration on the planet. I just sprinkle some up and down the center of the table and around the place settings for some extra color.
- Mini pumpkins. I’m a sucker for those mini pumpkins at the grocery store and adding 5 or 6 of them down the table runner adds nice dimension and color with practically zero effort.
- Black and white straws. My girls think ANYTHING with a straw is special, so $3 worth of black and white striped paper straws wins me a lot of mom points.
I’d love to hear what you do for Halloween dinner at your house! And if the answer is “a handful of fun-size Snickers,” well, no judgement from me!
If you liked this post with Halloween dinner ideas, you might also find these posts useful:
- Pumpkin Crepes with cream cheese filling (the best breakfast for Halloween!)
- How to set a Halloween table
- 13 Favorite Halloween Picture Books
I love this! Halloween night is always a rush between the time that my husband gets home and getting to our neighborhood park for a costume parade, so we usually have… cereal.
I bought some pumpkin and bat shaped ravioli at Costco yesterday, though, and have been trying to figure out when to use them. I thought they’d be cute with a white Alfredo sauce.
This is a fun idea! For the past three years our Halloween dinner is worm pie- basically spaghetti as a pie crust and filled with sauce and cheese. I can prep it ahead of time and it bakes quickly.
When I was a kid, my mom always did chili, which I didn’t love at the time (I was a picky kid). When my kids were babies I thought we’d do dinner in a pumpkin, which was an amazing recipe my college roommate taught me, but so far my kids aren’t in love with it and for the last couple of years I’ve just made pizza and shaped it like a jack o’lantern. I usually put on some cheddar with the mozarella to make it more orange. Easy, everyone eats it, no tears at the Halloween dinner table. I like this idea too though! My kids would definitely eat this and be thrilled.
We made this tonight! That soup is the best tomatoe soup I’ve ever made or had! For anyone else wondering it made 6 cups for us. Six cups of heaven!
Yay! Thanks for letting me know!
When my girls were little we always had pizza on Halloween. Now I have just one at home. She was so sad when I said it wasn’t safe to trick-or-treat this year. So to cheer her up we are doing a cheese fondue dinner and I am taking her to Target to pick out some candy.
Dress her in her costume for Target! Find a local big event, like a Trunk or Treat or something. Our small town does a Commercial Trick or Treat in a big parking lot downtown. Each business who wants in rents a table to decorate. They pass out candy to the kids and ads to parents. It cost 1 canned food item for the local food pantry to get in, or $2.
Visit people you know. Some of our friends do that and a couple of their favorite people to visit live in retirement centers and such. Their kids come home with a reasonably small load of candy and they all take lots of pictures!
Another family down the street we know well does a Hobo Dinner and a Trunk R Treat with people they know. I think they had over 50-60 people in their pasture last year.
We’ve done a family potluck in my parents’ front yard for years! Everyone brings a soup or a bread and we all gather around the fire pit and greet trick or treaters!
We finally settled on taco soup, and apple cider with a cinnamon stick straw. Easy, everyone likes it, and at least we have a little real food inside us before hitting the streets!
I love that!
I think on Halloween there should be games, parties for both adults parents kids
I make Mummy Dogs for my boys on Halloween. It is super easy and festive. They absolutely love them!! They always remind me to add the eyes with the mustard. And I usually serve them with fruit or a cold vegetable (cut up carrots or bell peppers).
https://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/crescent-mummy-dogs/d52a57d7-ab8a-4a1c-8dae-f9f90d03b912
I cut little jack o’ lantern faces in tortillas and make cheese and bean quesadillas . Cute, easy, and something I know my little one will eat.