Welcome to October – the month chock full of candy, chocolates and marshmallows galore. If it’s a Halloween treat, then no doubt it’s full of sugar. Well it’s time to take a ghostly sigh of relief, because we’ve drudged up 13 of the most healthy spooky-licious Halloween treats around, and they’re all wickedly simple.
1. Spooky Pizza Faces
Halloween is a great time to get everyone in the family involved in dinner preparations by making individual spooky-faced pizzas. It’s also the perfect opportunity for kids and parents alike to try some new veggies.
Make individual sized pizzas using any kind of crusts you’d like. We used small Chicago rolls sliced in half and baked in a 400* oven for five minutes to slightly toast the bread.
- Spread pizza sauce evenly over the bread or dough, then add shredded mozzarella cheese.
- Cut out shapes using pepperoni, salami, red peppers, string cheese, ham… the topping possibilities are endless.
- Then have the kids create their own spooky face!
- Once their faces are spooky enough, pop the tray back in the oven and bake for approximately 7 more minutes or until the cheese is melted.
2. Frankenstein Smoothie
Smoothies are the perfect way to use the fresh fruits and veggies that you froze in the peak of summer.
For a monster-ous twist on a smoothie, make sure you use lots of greens. For this smoothie we used a handful of spinach, sliced kiwi, frozen mangoes and strawberries, half a banana, vanilla greek yogurt and milk. If it’s not green enough, just add some more spinach. The kids will be stomping back for more.
3. Clementine Jack-O-Lantern
Looking for some extra Vitamin C during flu and cold season?
All you have to do is grab a bag of clementines or oranges and do the unthinkable: Hand over a black sharpie to your children! They’ll love making funny or scary faces to their orange jack-o-lanterns.
When they’re done, they’ll have just as much fun eating them as they did making them.
4. Mummy Dogs with Ketchup Blood
Here’s another twist on a kid favorite – hot dogs!
Start by unrolling a tube of refrigerated pizza dough and slice thin strips. Wrap the strips around the hot dogs to look like mummy wrappings. Bake in a 375* oven for approximately 12 minutes. Serve with a side of (ketchup) blood for some creepy dipping.
5. Jack-O-Lantern Fruit Tray
A platter-full of fresh fruits instead of more candy? Yes, please!
Cut up several oranges. You can go extra wild and peel them before cutting, or you can go the short-cut route and leave the peels on as we did. Lay them out on a tray in a circle and fill in the circle with more oranges. Make a face with blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, grapes… whatever you would like your jack-o-lantern to look like. Don’t forget the kiwi stem.
6. Butternut Squash Soup with Sour Cream Spider Web
Nothing screams fall like creamy butternut squash soup, and it’s scary-easy to make.
- Hollow out a big butternut squash, scooping out the seeds and taking off the peel, then cut into cubes.
- Put the cubes in a microwave-safe covered dish with a tiny splash of water.
- Microwave for approximately 10 minutes, or until soft.
- Put the squash in a soup pan and add roughly a half-cup of heavy cream, a few dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.
- Use an immersion blender to thoroughly blend until you have a smooth texture. If you don’t have an immersion blender, transfer the soup to a blender and blend until smooth, then transfer back to the pan.
- Simply warm the soup and put in a soup bowl.
- Before serving, put some sour cream in a plastic sandwich bag and cut a tiny hole in the corner. Then, draw a sour cream spider web on top of the soup for some Halloween fun.
7. Dark Chocolate Pretzel Spiders
This is the only kind of spider that we consider to be cute. And they do say that dark chocolate is good for you, right?
Pour a bag of dark chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl and heat for 30 seconds. Take the bowl of chocolate out and stir. Continue to heat in 10 second intervals until thoroughly melted.
Lay a sheet of parchment paper on top of a large cookie sheet. Put dollops of chocolate on the parchment paper, then have your kids add pretzel stick legs. If you don’t want your spiders to have frighteningly long legs, then break the pretzel sticks in half. Once each spider has 8 legs, put the cookie sheet with the spiders in the fridge for a couple hours or overnight until the chocolate is hardened. They’ll be gone within minutes of taking them out of the fridge.
8. Pumpkin Shaped Salami and Cheese Tray
A jack (o-lantern) of all trades: meat and cheese tray.
Simply take salami, pepperoni, crackers and cheese and make your masterpiece. Use sliced black olives for eyes and a strip of red pepper for a mouth. Don’t forget the spinach or celery stem. Be as spooky, cute, or silly as you’d like.
9. Pumpkin Pancakes
Pancakes are always a crowd-pleaser. Let your kids add silly faces with whipped cream and they’ll be begging for more.
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10. Haunted Trail Mix
It’s a typical trail mix until you step into the haunted pumpkin candy corn maze.
Mix together chex mix, cheerios, raisins, tiny pretzels, caramel corn and a bag of pumpkin-shaped candy corn. You could even add in some chocolate graham cracker shaped-fish, orange and brown M&Ms, peanuts… whatever your little goblins like to munch on is perfect for this haunted trail mix.
11. Black Cat Cheese Head
Meow! Don’t let this black cat cross your path: eat it instead!
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12. Eyeball Punch and Spider Cider
Don’t forget the spooky drinks! Eyeball Punch and Spider Cider deliver a fun and spine-chilling twist while keeping your little zombies hydrated!
Eyeball Punch
Ingredients
1 Large can of pineapple juice
7 cups of fruit punch
1 liter of gingerale
48 oz. Orange sherbert
Mix all ingredients together and throw in some plastic eyeballs. You could also use gummy eyeballs if you can find them.
Spider Cider
Simply pour some apple cider in a pitcher or bowl and toss in some plastic black spiders.
13. Full Moon and Stars Apples with Pumpkin Dip
Kids will howl for these full moon apple slices. Let them dip the apples (or graham crackers, cookies, or whatever they’d like) in the pumpkin dip and they may even be willing to hand over all their candy. You’ll be licking the spoon before the kids can catch you.
Now that you’ve convinced your children that Halloween can be spooky, fun, and healthy, maybe you can also convince them to be astronauts or doctors for their costumes instead of bloody ghouls or ferocious werewolves. No? Oh well, we’ve at least won one battle.
Photo Credit: Melissa Wistehuff, River (Wing-It Vegan)
