Quick and easy Halloween food

It's that spooky time of year again! When the goblins, ghouls and grim reapers come out to play!

And with that comes gruesome and gory treats.

We don't all have time to bake and make epic Halloween treats, so here are some of our favourite easy, spooky and delicious tricks for the last-minute freaky feast!

Go savoury

For the last couple of years, cheeseboards and savoury snacks have been all the rage when it comes to Halloween, because not everyone is about the sugar rush, and some of these treats can actually double as dinner (winning!).

So get into the gruesome groove with plenty of prosciutto and cheese sticks.

Ghostly cheeseboards are in!

Make a "boo-schetta: with toast topped with tomato, basil and slices of cheese cut into ghost, bat and moon shapes and laid on top.

• Panini

• Tomato puree

• Basil

• Rocket

• Cheese slices

• Balsamic glaze

Add a meat hand to the board - just shape a hand out of cream cheese and cheese sticks for fingers and then cover the lot in prosciutto for the creepiest-looking severed hand on your cheese platter.

Don't forget to add some chutney to the wrist!

• Cream cheese dip - for the hand

• Cheese stringer sticks - for the fingers

• Prosciutto - for the skin

• Chutney - for the blood

• Crackers - to dip

Open your peepers to cheese eyeballs

This could not be simpler or more creepy-looking.

Just grab some bocconcini, cut a hole in the middle and fill it with a pimento-stuffed olive.

Wrap the edges in prosciutto or salami and secure it all with a skewer.

• bocconcini

• olives

• prosciutto

Skull cucumbers and mushrooms

These also look great on a cheeseboard or as a salad.

Just use a straw to make eyes in your cucumber slices and halved mushrooms and then cut a jaw and teeth into the shape too.

Splash it all with a sweet chilli dressing and you have a savoury salad snack full of little skulls.

• Cucumbers

• Button mushrooms

• Chilli oil or garlic vinaigrette for sauce

Monster eggs

Now these you can cut in half and turn into devilled eggs where the filling is made green for a monster egg.

Or you can simply add an olive ring to the yolk to make it look like an eye.

The trick is in the colouring and the veined spiderweb pattern.

Simply boil your eggs, remove them from the water, crack them all over with the back of a spoon to create spiderweb cracks and then sit them in some purple or red food dye for half an hour.

When you peel them they will have an evil-looking spiderweb and vein pattern all over them. Creepy!

• Eggs

• Purple or red food dye

• Black olives, sliced

Sweets get super easy

Sweet treats are still essential at Halloween.

But, aside from all the candy from trick-or-treating, here are three fun ways to get your sweet on with minimal fuss (no baking) and letting store-bought items do the work for you.

Ghost cupcakes

Just roll out some white ready-to-roll fondant and cut it into circles.

Take a premade and pre-iced cupcake, pop a marshmallow on top to hold the shape and then drape one of the fondant circles over the top like a little ghost sheet.

Paint some eyes on with black food dye and you have a ghost cupcake!

• Pre-made and pre-iced cupcakes

• Marshmallows

• White fondant

• Black food dye

Witches hat cupcakes

Again, use pre-made and pre-iced cupcakes.

Grab some ice cream cones and cut the pointy end off at an angle.

Melt some chocolate in the microwave and then stick that pointy bit back on at an angle so that upside down you have a witches hat.

Cover the lot in chocolate, let it set and then pop it on top of an iced cupcake. Fun!

You can even fill the middle with sprinkles if you like.

• Cupcakes (chocolate)

• Waffle cones

• Dark chocolate

• Coloured fondant - to make and decorations on the hat

• Sprinkles for inside

Spider cupcakes

Grab those pre-made and pre-iced cupcakes again and this time top them with Maltesers and broken-up pretzels to make little spider-topped cupcakes!

So simple the kids can do it and it only takes moments.

• Pre-made and pre-iced cupcakes

• pretzels, broken into pieces for legs

• Maltesers

Drinks

Mocktails are all the rage so that the kids can get involved and join the fun.

Make some edible blood to rim your glasses by colouring honey with some red food dye.

You can make monster goo by doing the same thing with honey and green food dye, then just run it round the rim of a glass and fill it with strawberry or chocolate milk for full effect.

Add some lychee eyeballs by draining a tin of lychees and popping blueberries into the middle as pupils and then dropping the lychees into your red cordial. They will bob around and look so gruesome.

Add some marshmallow spider web to the top of the glass by meting some marshmallow in the microwave for ten seconds (a little more if needed) and using your fingers to pull it apart and drape it over the glasses like sticky spider web. Add edible sparkles too for fun.

And last, if you're feeling spicy, use little chillis to make chilli devil horns on the side of a glass filled with pomegranate juice. Simple, but very effective.

Jane de Graaff is Today's kitchen expert, food writer and recipe developer and content creator for fun family recipes of all kinds.

Find all Jane's food adventures, tricks and tips on Instagram and TikTok.