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Make your Halloween night extra spooky this year by trying out one of our fun Halloween Dinner Ideas. From drinks to dinner to desserts, we’ve got you covered! Be sure to grab our complete menu plan and printable shopping list.
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Halloween is so much more than all that candy!
When it comes to feeding your little ghosts and goblins before heading out to trick-or-treat this October, fill their tummies with good food before they start in on sugar.
Of course, you can always go with the classics, like hot dogs or pizzas, but if you want to make supper a little more special for your little ghouls, we have all sorts of delicious Halloween dinner recipe ideas to choose from.
You can make a tasty, wholesome, yet spooky Halloween supper that your children and guests will gobble up (even the picky eaters)!
This post includes all the Halloween recipes you need, plus a sample meal plan and shopping list so all your work is done for you!
Halloween Dinner Ideas
You can never go wrong with chili on Halloween night. It was always a tradition in our family to have a big bowl of chili before going trick-or-treating!
When we are feeling extra festive, we will serve our soup, chili, casserole in a pumpkin, or our mom’s spooky shepherd’s pie. Here are some super easy Halloween dinner ideas to try this year:
- Soup In a Pumpkin
- Spaghetti with Eyeballs (see recipe below)
- Dinner In a Pumpkin
- Easy Shepherd’s Pie
- Mom’s Cheater Chili
Halloween Drinks
Just like Halloween dinner ideas, the possibilities for Halloween drinks are endless.
You can pretty much do any kind of punch and throw in some gummy worms or plastic eyeballs and you have a spooky punch.
For Harry Potter themed Halloween parties, you can also try one of our specialty Harry Potter drinks (the perfect companion to any of our Halloween dinner ideas!). Any of these drink ideas are sure to be a hit at your next Halloween party:
- Harry Potter Butterbeer
- Frozen Butterbeer
- Pumpkin Juice
- Pumpkin Spice Steamer
- Shrunken Apple Head Punch (see recipe below)
Halloween Dessert Ideas
Oh how we LOVE our Halloween desserts! Any fall-inspired dessert with pumpkin is a great choice for Halloween. Make them extra “Halloween-y” by adding black frosting spiders or garnish with candy corn pumpkins.
Here are some great Halloween desserts to accompany any of our Halloween dinner ideas:
- Pumpkin Pasties
- Pumpkin Bundt Cake (What we used to make the Spider Bundt Cake below)
- Easy Pumpkin Trifle
- Pumpkin Sheet Cake
- Pumpkin Cobbler Cake
Halloween Treats
Just in case you aren’t getting enough sugar this Halloween while trick-or-treating, here are some ideas for some kid-friendly Halloween treats. These are perfect for class parties, potlucks, a witch’s night out, or trunk-or-treats!
Sample Halloween Dinner Menu Plan
- Bread/Appetizer: Mummy Cheesy Garlic Bread
- Main Dish: Spaghetti with Eyeballs
- Side Dish: Caesar “Spider” Salad
- Drink: Shrunken Apple Head Punch
- Dessert: Giant Spider Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake
Halloween Bread/Appetizer: Mummy Cheesy Garlic Bread
- To make this monster bread, cut up some strips of mozzarella cheese (strips of string cheese work well too).
- Place them on a bakery garlic bread.
- Heat the bread in the oven at 375 degrees for about 5 minutes.
- Finally, add a couple olive slices for “eyes”.
Main Halloween Dinner Dish: Spaghetti with Eyeballs
- Use your favorite canned spaghetti sauce, spaghetti pasta, store bought meatballs, cheese and olives. See the recipe below for more details.
- To give the spaghetti the twirled “nest” look, just twist big scoops spaghetti with a fork in a ladle (my niece Kelsey taught me how to do this and I LOVE how it looks)!
- Serve with a side of parmesan cheese for sprinkling.
Halloween Side Dish: Caesar Spider Salad
- For this simple side, just use a bagged Caesar salad kit and place plastic spiders over the top.
- If you want to add eyeballs to this, slice grape tomatoes in half, slice off a circle of string cheese, and add an olive (much like the meatballs in the spaghetti).
- You can also add grilled chicken and serve this salad as more of a main course.
Halloween Drink: Shrunken (Apple) Head Punch
- This is a fun way to get your kids involved in dinner preparation. Let them “carve” their own jack-o lanterns out of apples. They’ll get a kick out of seeing their apple “heads” floating in the punch!
- Slice each apple in half and let the kids carve out faces.
- Bake the apple halves in the oven at 200-degrees for about 10 minutes and then put them in the fridge to cool.
- You can also use a cookie cutter to create fun shapes in the apples.
- For the punch, use 2 liters of water, 2 liters ginger ale (chilled), 46 oz pineapple juice (chilled), and 4 Jolly Rancher Green Apple “On-The-Go” packets. Instead of putting ice in the punch bowl, you can put the ice in the individual glasses to prevent the juice from being watered down.
Halloween Dessert: Giant Spider Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake
This might be my favorite thing on the whole menu (and my favorite Halloween dinner idea overall!). This was so fun to make and the finished product looked SO COOL.
- For this cake make our Pumpkin Bundt Cake and divide the frosting in half.
- Use half of the frosting to lightly frost the whole cake.
- To the other half, add ⅓ cup dark cocoa powder and black food coloring and mix until the frosting turns black.
- Then, put the black frosting and in a gallon Ziplock bag, snip off the end and pipe 8 spider “legs” going from the center to the edges.
- Fill in the middle to make the spider “body” and a little dollop for the head.
- Finally, use a little extra of the white frosting to pipe little fangs and then use 2 Red Hots for the eyes.
Halloween Dinner Grocery List
To make things nice and easy for you, we have put together a shopping list for this particular meal plan. Here’s what you need for this easy Halloween dinner meal plan (FYI – The dinner feeds 4-6, the dessert feeds 12-15). You can download this list to your phone or to print below.
Dairy
- Sour cream – 8 ounce carton
- 4 large eggs
- Sliced mozzarella cheese (low-moisture, part skim)
- Cream cheese – 16 ounces
- Butter – ½ cup
Produce
- 1 Family-size Caesar salad kit
- Granny Smith apples – 4 to 6 small apples
Bakery
- Garlic bread – 1 loaf
Frozen
- Pre-cooked frozen meatballs – 24 ounce bag
Baking
- Vegetable or canola oil – ½ cup
- Spice cake mix – 15 ounce box
- Instant pumpkin spice pudding mix – 3.4 ounce box (vanilla works great too if you can’t find pumpkin spice)
- Mini semi-sweet chocolate chips – 10 ounces
- Powdered sugar – 32 ounces
- Cocoa powder
- Vanilla extract
- Black food coloring
- Red Hots (or any other tiny, round red candies)
General Grocery
- Spaghetti noodles – 16 ounces
- Spaghetti sauce – 24 ounce jar
- Sliced olives – 2.5 ounce can
- Pimento-stuffed green olives – 1 small jar
- Ginger ale – 2 liters
- Jolly Rancher Green Apple “On-The-Go” packets (6 pack)
- Pineapple juice – 46 ounces
Printable Shopping List
Halloween Dinner: Spaghetti and Eyeballs
Video
Ingredients
- 16 ounces spaghetti noodles (prepared according to packagedirections)
- 24 ounces jar spaghetti sauce (heated according to package directions)
- 24 ounces pre-cooked frozen meatballs (cooked according to package directions)
- 2-3 slices part-skim mozzarella cheese
- sliced black olives (to taste)
- pimento-stuffed green olives (to taste)
Instructions
- Cook noodles, sauce, and meatballs according to package directions. Combine noodles and sauce. Mix until well combined. Form "nests" of noodles by twirling noodles in a serving ladle with a fork and then placing in a serving bowl. After meatballs have cooled slightly, cut out circles of mozzarella cheese and place one circle on each meatball. Place one black olive slice over the cheese circle.
- Gently place meatballs randomly over the spaghetti. Add green olives over the top, to taste.
- Serve with cheesy "mummy" bread and Caesar "spider" salad.
Nutrition Information
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Thank you Erica! Having a sleepover with my Granddaughters next weekend and Spaghetti and meatballs is their favorite. I am definetly going to make this supper, soooo adorable! They will love it. Maybe turn it into a little party with a couple of their cousins. Thank you so much for sharing.
Oh wow – so many great ideas to save! My favorite would probably be spaghetti with meatball eyes – so spooky! 😉
This is such a delicious recipe! Can’t wait to try it for Halloween!
These are such fun Halloween dinner ideas for kids!
I love all these options to create a wonderful Halloween themed dinner!
All these ideas look amazing and perfect for a Halloween theme! Looking forward to making that bundt cake 🙂
overall i would rate this a 4 star because the treat recipes do not give the recipe