Food Ideas: Halloween & Horror Parties

1 Give Normal Food  a Spooky Name

Here are just a few ideas for names - but the list is endless. Many foods can be given a Halloween or horror spin with the right name:

• "Spook-getti bolognaise" = spaghetti bolognaise
• "Ghoulash" = goulash
• "Bats' blood chili"  = chili con carne 
• "Witch's bake" = pasta bake (Halloween pasta shapes are a fun twist)
• "Devilled eggs", "Devil's food cake"
• "Tirama-boo" = turn Tiramisu into a spooky pudding with a fancy name and decorations
• "Boo-berry mousse" = blueberry mousse
• "Eye scream" = ice cream decorated with "eyes" on cocktail sticks (think lychees with blackberries or blueberries in the middle)
• "Veinilla ice cream" = vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce (ideal for a vampire theme)

1.1 Eye Scream

Give standard jelly and ice cream a Halloween-twist by placing blueberries or small dark grapes inside lychees to represent eyes. Place two lychee "eyes" inside each cocktail or wine glass and then pour in (slightly cooled) jelly. Place in the fridge once cool enough. Ensure that the jellies set so that the "eyes" face upwards in the same direction. This step can be done the night before your party. (Some vegetarian jellies, however, are best consumed within a few hours of making as they can separate more readily.)

With the remaining lychee "eyes", use food coloring and a cocktail stick to create the illusion of eyes.  (Warning: this could stain your fingers.) It is best to pat the lychees dry on kitchen paper before you start to minimize the "bleeding" of the food coloring into the lychees. I found it easiest to insert the blueberry into the lychee first and then thread this onto a cocktail stick before applying the food coloring.

These eyes-on-sticks should be able to be stored in the fridge for a few hours BUT they will need to stored upright OR on top of shot/wine glasses. If you leave them in a dish, a small amount of water will drain out of the lychees; this will cause the red food coloring to bleed and you will end up with a pink lychee.  Be aware that, over time, the food coloring will slowly bleed into the lychees and so the lines will become less defined.

When you wish to serve, put ice cream in a shot glass or wine glass, top with the lychee eye, and serve next to your jelly and lychees.

This works best if you use Halloween colors (orange, purple or green) or horror colors (red or dark purple) for both the jelly and ice cream. Optionally, add an adult twist by adding alcohol to the jelly or creating an alcoholic fruity sauce.

As with everything, presentation is key. I served raspberry jelly in Martini glasses and turned matching Martini glasses upside down to form the base for the raspberry sorbet in shot glass. Wine glasses would work just as well.

1.2 Food Presentation

Presentation really is all important. For our horror murder mystery party, we gave guests "ghoulash" but did not present it in a horror or Halloween way. (It just looked like a normal beef stew.) For our Halloween murder mystery, we got more adventurous and served each guest an individual dish of stew topped with a spooky pastry shape. (We used witch's hats, bat wings and coffins.)

2 Food and Drink Mentioned in the Murder Mystery Games

Optionally, serve food and drink mentioned in the murder mystery game itself. This can be especially effective if done towards the middle or end of the party, when guests will understand the references.

• "Murder at the Halloween Party" makes references to:
  • Bat Poop Drops (round 5 onwards) - Drac serves some - appetising? - sounding bat poop drops. In reality, bat poop drops could be chocolate-covered raisins or chocolate-covered peanuts. (These are easy to buy from most shops.) Alternatively, be creative and turn "bat poop drops" into a yummy petit-four. For example, coat homemade truffles in chocolate or cocoa powder, dip small pieces of your favourite cake or biscuit in milk or dark chocolate, have small spoonfuls of chocolate cornflake and raisin cakes covered in yet more chocolate or dip raspberries or other fruits in chocolate. Savory alternatives might include black olives, black olive tapenade, or bite-sized burgers. Arrange the "bat poop drops" in a dish and add a spooky label from the game's decoration pack.  
  • Eye of Newt Cocktails (round 5 onwards) - any form of orange or green cocktail or mocktail, possibly with a green or orange "eye". Make this eye out of a lychee with a piece of orange or green fruit in the center and then use a cocktail stick and green or orange food coloring to create small lines out from the center. Place fruited lychee on a cocktail stick and store so that lychees are not sitting in a bowl. (I found that leaving lychees with food coloring on them in a bowl caused the colors to run.)
• "Murder at Horror Castle" makes references to:
  • Witch's Brew (mentioned throughout the game) - any cocktail, mocktail, punch, beer or Sangria you choose with a red, black, green or purple color; optionally add food coloring to change your normal tipple into a brew suitable for Ghostie, Spookie and Shady.
  • Bat pudding with blood sauce (round 4) - decorate a summer pudding with plastic bats and then serve with "blood sauce" (raspberry or strawberry coulis in a blood bag that can be bought from different Amazon or other online shops)

3 How to Decorate Normal Food With a Twist of Halloween or Horror

You can take normal food and decorate it in an eerie way. As with everything, presentation is all important.

3.1 Purchase Halloween Food Presentation Aids

You can optionally invest in a few food presentation aids that can add a real spooktacular feel to your party food. For example:

• Halloween cookie cutters can be used to cut pastry, cakes, sandwiches, scones and cookies into shapes such as bat wings, coffins, pumpkins, witch's hats, skulls and ghosts.
• Party blood bags or syrnges can be used to hold red drinks, fruit coulis, tomato sauce, fake blood and sauces colored with red food coloring. (For example, the Marie Rose sauce for prawn cocktails could have red food coloring added.) We bought blood bags from PopManko and were happy with the design and quality. We teamed these with tall spiral place setting card holders so that the blood bags could be upright.
• A packet of Halloween sweets can turn normal food into spooky food. For example, try jelly snakes or bats, jelly eyeballs or edible Dracula teeth.
• Edible eyes can turn egg mayonnaise into "eye mayonnaise".
• Fake bats, spiders or mice can be used to decorate cold dishes served to guests. (I tend to wash these first!)
• Food coloring can also be used to turn normal food into something that looks vile but still tastes great. Tip: ensure you use enough coloring or else red can become pink and black can become grey.
• Lay a (clean) skeleton on your table and have cold meats or sausages arranged on a plate or board within the rib cage. 
• The food labels and menu cards that come with each game's decoration pack can be used to let guests know your spooky names.

3.2 Just Use Your Imagination

Alternatively, use nothing more than your imagination to turn simple food into Halloween food.

• Arrange pate, guacamole or eggs into monster faces using olives for the eyes, potato chips or cooked noodles for the hair and carrots and peppers for the mouths.
• Add lychees stuffed with dark grapes, blueberries, blackberries or raspberries to a melon starter, dessert or drink to represent eyes.
• Shape sandwiches or cakes into coffin shapes.
• Cut brownies or other flat-baked cakes into tombstone shapes and add RIP in icing. 
• Cut sandwiches made with dark bread into tombstone or coffin shapes and add RIP in mayonnaise.
• Add a spider's web to a cake or cheesecake by piping a spiral onto the cooked cake/cheesecake and then using a cocktail stick to drag lines from the center to the edge.

4 A Few Halloween and Horror Culinary Themes

4.1 Vampire-Themed Food

Murder at Horror Castle includes vampire "ambassadors" from the Kingdom of Blood and so a vampire theme could be very appropriate to this mystery game.

4.1.1 General

Naturally red foods:

• Meat - ham, bacon, steaks, rare beef, rare tuna etc.
• Vegetables - red peppers, red onions, red cabbage, radishes, tomatoes, beetroot; tomato sauce.
• Fruit - cherries, raspberries, strawberries, red grapes, red-skinned apples, plums, redcurrants, pomegranates, watermelon, pink grapefruit, blood oranges, cranberries, rhubarb; strawberry and raspberry jam or coulis.
• Other - red rice, red pasta, beetroot noodles, red pesto etc.

For an authentically gruesome experience:

• Buy a pack of "IV Blood Bags" complete with clips and labels, and fill with red drinks or red sauce.  Sites such as Amazon sell reusable drinking pouches styled as blood bags for themed parties. Fill with an appropriately red sauce. For example, for prawn cocktails, add red food coloring to make the Marie Rose sauce more red. For summer puddings or ice cream, fill with a raspberry or strawberry coulis.
• Buy a pack of party syringes and place red sauce inside these.
• Make fake blood by mixing cornflour, water and red food coloring. (Some sites also say to add corn syrup, a small amount of blue food coloring and flavorings such as vanilla essence.) Drizzle this fake blood over desserts, glasses, plates, glasses etc as you wish. (Take any necessary steps to protect clothes and furnishings.)

4.1.2 Starters

Sandwiches - make out of dark bread shaped like coffins. Optionally add "RIP" with mayonnaise.

Prawn cocktail - add red food coloring to the Marie Rose sauce and serve sauce in a "blood bag" so your vampire guests can add their own "blood". Also cut the bread into coffin shapes. See photo below.

Charcuterie meats - serve with red vegetables such as tomatoes, a red coleslaw (red onions, red cabbage, red apples, carrots in a mayonnaise dressing with optional red food coloring) and a bat wing made out of puff pastry with red pesto added.

Tomato or red pepper soup - add a fun extra touch with toast or sliced bread cut into coffin or bat shapes.

Red salad - make a salad out of red vegetables with optional red pasta or rice. A useful red salad dressing = 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar, 1-2 teaspoons of melted strawberry or raspberry jam (to taste), chopped fresh mint, salt and pepper to taste. In place of strawberry jam, I sometimes use half strawberry jam and half runny honey. If entertaining vegan friends, I substitute runny honey for maple syrup.

4.1.3 Mains

Vampire bake with blood bags - turn a tomato-based pasta bake into food fit for vampires by adding additional tomato sauce into a "blood bag" and placing bat wing or coffin-shaped pastry on top of the finished pasta bake. 

Vampire bake without blood bags - make a pasta bake in advance and reserve some tomato sauce. Create batwing or coffin-shaped puff pastry shapes in advance and set aside. Grate cheese and place in the fridge. As you are about to serve, reheat the tomato sauce and the puff pastry shapes. Spread the tomato sauce over the top of the pasta bake, add cheese in the middle and place the coffin or batwing shape on top. For a touch of irony, make garlic-bread coffins or bat wings! Optionally add a food label such as "Vampire's End".

Garlic bread coffins or batwings - cut a coffin shape out of a slice of white bread. For the garlic butter, allow butter to come to room temperature and then mix with crushed garlic cloves; optionally add your choice of flavoring such as parsley, thyme, paprika or parmesan cheese. Spread the garlic butter on the bread and set covered to one side while you enjoy the party.  To cook, place in a hot oven on a tray on greaseproof paper for 5 minutes (or so) as your guests are sitting down. Alternatively, grill for a couple of minutes. (Grilling is quicker but I prefer the cooked-all-through texture that oven baking gives.)

Steak - if you are serving food before the game begins, then serve a steak with a wooden skewer through it. (A stake through the heart!) 

4.1.4 Desserts

Red desserts - red velvet cake, red jelly, cheesecakes drizzled with strawberry or raspberry compote, chocolate cupcakes topped with "blood" icing.

Blood fondue - make by melting butter and cream and adding white chocolate chips and food coloring. Serve with skewers of red fruits or red velvet cake. Optionally, add vampire sweets to the end of some skewers. Optionally, decorate the fondue dish with images of vampires.

Easy pudding decorations - try some plastic bats on top of the pudding. Or melt vampire teeth gummy sweets with red candy melts to represent blood drips. Or "splatter" red icing over biscuits or cakes.

Dark scones - serve with raspberry or strawberry jam; use food coloring or blueberry powder to color the scones. For an added spooky feel, cut the scones into coffin or bat wing shapes.

4.1.5 Drinks

Red drinks - cocktails colored with red food coloring; watermelon and Vodka cocktail with a miniature watermelon bat on a skewer; dark red punch; Bloody Mary; raspberry smoothies; berry fruit juice.

Vampire presentation - serve in a blood bag or syringe. Alternatively, hang fang sweets on the rim of the glass or create edible fake blood and drizzle this down the rim of glasses. (Take any necessary steps to protect clothes and furnishings.) Or cover the rim of glasses in red sugar. Even a simple touch like a cherry or raspberry on a cocktail stick can help to transform a red, dark purple or black cocktail.

4.2 Witches, Cobwebs and Cauldrons-Themed Food

Murder at Horror Castle is set in the fictional Witch Kingdom. Murder at the Halloween Party is set in a witch-themed Cobwebs and Cauldrons hotel. Witch-themed food is therefore very appropriate to both murder mysteries.

4.2.1 Starters

Salad - make into the shape of a witch's face.

• Create a witch's hat out of black foods (think black charcoal crackers, black olives, blackberries, black pasta, sultanas etc).
• Make the hair out of:
  • stringy foods such as cooked noodles
  • curved foods such as mange tout, pepper slices or curls of carrot or courgette
  • straight foods such as potato chips or thin strips of carrot, cucumber or celery.
• Make the eyes out of pate, guacamole or halved hard-boiled eggs. For an extra spooky effect, use food colouring to dye the eggs. Add slices of olives or edible eyes to create the eyeballs.  
• Make the nose out of carrot, celery, a walnut etc.
• Make the mouth out of red pepper. Optionally have dressing coming out of the mouth or use almond flakes for teeth.

Witch's fingers - make out of cheese straws and then use red pesto and almonds to make the nails. 

Bones - make cheese straws into bone shapes.

Bread cauldron - make a cauldron out of a circular loaf of brown bread. Just before serving, fill with guacamole or a cheese dip. Optionally decorate with spiders made out of olives or with spooky sweets. Serve with crudities.

Spider's web guacamole, dip or mousse - take your favorite recipe, present it in a circular dish, and smooth the top. To make the spider's web, pipe over thick sour cream or mayonnaise etc in the form of a spiral (or circles that increase in size from the center) then use a cocktail stick or knife to drag lines from the center to the outside to make the web. Optionally, make spiders out of pitted olives: use an olive half for the body and cut other olive halves into strips for the legs.

Tip: consider making everything in advance of your party and then adding in the spider's web just before you are about to serve. This gives the web less time to “bleed” into the base.

Spider's web soup - serve your favorite soup. As you are about to serve, create a spider's web out of sour cream.

Witch’s brooms - make using pretzels or carrot sticks for the broom handle and cheese strings or small, thin slithers of carrot for the brush. Use a food “string” such as a cheese string to tie the brush part onto the handle.

4.2.3 Mains

Witchy bake = pasta bake. Once finished, serve with additional tomato sauce and puff pastry made out of witch's hats and witch's cats. Optionally serve with garlic bread cut into the shapes of witch's hats and witch's cats. (See  Vampire Bake above for further details.)

Tip: if you are running your game around the fall season, then the shops will keep different forms of Halloween pasta shapes.

Witchy stew = any stew of your choice topped with puff pastry cut into witch's hat or witch's cat shapes. Or add cheese straws made into "bone" shapes.

4.2.4 Desserts

Spider’s web pudding - any cake, cheesecake or trifle with a spider's web drawn on it with icing or melted chocolate.  For example, top a chocolate cake with chocolate icing; then form a spider's web on top by gently drawing a knife through circles of white icing. For a reverse effect, use a chocolate trifle, top with cream and then form a spider's web by drawing a knife through circles of melted dark chocolate. Optionally make spiders out of large chocolate buttons: use a button for the body and then use slices of buttons for the legs.

Cauldron cakes - cakes decorated to look like a cauldron.

Shaped cookies - cookies cut into the shape of a witch's hat or a witch's cat.

Orange or lemon witchy mousse - scoop out oranges or lemons. Add witchy eyes and mouths to the outside of each citrus fruit. (Decide whether to carve with a sharp knife, use a black felt tip or attach shapes of black card.) Fill the citrus fruit with a mousse of your choice. Then top with a chocolate covered circular biscuit for the base of the hat. For the main part of the hat, use a chocolate covered ice cream cone or else pipe chocolate cream into a cone shape on top of each hat base.

Ice cream or mousse under a witch's hat - a scoop of ice cream or mousse with a chocolate witch's hat on top. (To make the witch's hat, cover an ice cream cone or a strawberry in chocolate; use more chocolate or else colored icing to "glue" it to a chocolate-covered biscuit base. Decorate with sugar sprinkles as you wish.)

Strawberry witch cake - make a cake with your choice of flavor. Cover with whipped cream; optionally use green or purple food colouring for the cream. Dip strawberries in chocolate. Create witch’s hats by attaching chocolate strawberries to small chocolate-covered biscuits using chocolate or colored icing. Decorate the cake with witch’s hats and spooky sweets. An alternative to chocolate-covered strawberries is Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses.

4.3 Zombie-Themed Food

In Murder at Horror Castle, the Kingdom of the Undead (the Zombie kingdom) sends an "ambassador" to the Witch Kingdon and so zombie food could be appropriate for this game.

A few general ideas:

Skull and brain themes:

• Make a mix of cream cheese and ham into a skull shape.
• Use Sushi in the shape of a brain.
• Fill a brain mould with chicken mousse; top with a red sauce such as cranberry or tomato.
• Fill a brain mould with white jelly, then top with strawberry or raspberry sauce.
• Cut red fondant cake into a brain shape, cover with white fondant rolls and smear with strawberry or raspberry fruity sauce to resemble a brain.
• Pipe thick frosted icing onto cupcakes to represent a brain. Drizzle with berry sauce.

Grave theme - cut arms out of coloured paper, tape them to something solid such as a wooden fork and then stick them onto a brown-iced cake to make it look as if the victim is trying to claw up through the grave. Optionally add gravestones made our of crackers or biscuits with the words “RIP - Not” piped in icing on them.

Eyeball punch - use lychees stuffed with blueberries, blackberries or black grapes for the eyeballs.

Zombie arrangement - instead of using a skeleton as the basis of a food arrangement, make a zombie out of a skull, an old, stained (but washed) shirt and an old, tattered (but washed) pair of trousers or a skirt. Lay these out on the table to represent a zombie shape. Arrange plates of food on top of the clothes. Optionally make “hands” out of sausages.

4.4 General Halloween and Horror-Themed Food

4.4.1 Starters and Mains

"Black Snakes" - pizza dough tinted with squid ink and baked in squiggly shapes. Serve with homemade hummus made with black tahini or shop hummus darkened with food colouring.

Black or purple vegetables - roasted black or purple carrots with honey and thyme; purple potatoes roasted in their jackets.

Blood pudding.

Charcoal - charcoal bread or homemade bread with food colouring. Charcoal crackers.

Sushi - make with black rice.

Fruit pie with a purple crust (use blueberry powder to transform your ordinary pastry crust).

Black squid-ink pasta with prawns or other seafood.

Skeleton - puff-pastry intestines; bloody finger hot dogs; arrange your charcuterie board into a plastic skeleton allowing the "intestines" to spill out.

Melon with lychee eyeballs - optionally make this into a face with melon fangs. (See photo below.)

Savory watermelon salad - for example, use a watermelon, feta, cucumber, and mint combination with a dressing of your choice.  Add a spooky touch by using pastry cutters to cut shapes out of a watermelon. Possible shapes include witchy hats, witchy cats, bats, pumpkins etc.  (Watermelon is an ideal fruit for this as it does not have a central area for seeds and therefore it is possible to cut large shapes out of each slice.) Optionally, put each watermelon shape on a side plate, top it with the feta, cucumber, mint, and dressing combination, and serve these individual portions to guests.

Black bread - Nigella Lawson has an interesting black bread no-knead recipe.

4.4.2 Desserts

Fruit salad Halloween-style - cut the top off a watermelon and carefully scoop out the flesh. Cut a spooky face out of the watermelon side. (For example, cut triangles for the eyes and nose and cut a grinning mouth shape). Then fill with your favourite fruit salad and place on a plate in the fridge to keep cool. Serve on a plate with fruit salad spilling out of the mouth. (I love to make my own dressing by mixing Grand Marnier and runny honey to taste and then adding chopped fresh mint.)

Alternative fruit salad - arrange fruit pieces and segments into the shape of a face. Then use pastry cutters to cut spooky shapes out of watermelon slices and place these around the face. Alternatively, make shrunken apple "skulls" and add these as a garnish.

Murder mystery cake - cake covered in red and black icing with a knife (also smeared with red icing) sticking out.

Chocolate pudding - top a chocolate pudding with gummy worms or plastic spiders.

Strawberry ghosts - dip strawberries in white chocolate, leave to set and then use milk or dark chocolate to pipe eyes and mouth shapes.

Halloween pie - any form of pastry-topped pie can be turned into a spooky version by cutting out eye and nose shapes and a "Jack Skellington" grin. For October, a pumpkin pie is ideal. If making an apple pie, consider garnishing with shrunken apple skulls.

RIP puddings: chocolate pudding topped with brownie crumbs or Oreo crumbs to represent dirt, with a tombstone-shaped biscuit with RIP piped onto it. For an adult version, make a tiramisu trifle by soaking sponges in a mix of coffee liquor and strong coffee, topping with a layer of set custard (suitably coloured) and then another layer of whipped cream (coloured if you wish); add a generous cocoa dusting and then use crumbled brownies to represent dirt; then shape a large cracker into a tombstone shape and dip in melted dark chocolate. When the chocolate is set, pipe "RIP". Decorate with (washed) plastic spiders or a dolls' hand reaching up through the "graveyard".

4.4.3 Drinks

Apple cider punch - add shrunken apple skulls.

Finger punch - fill a (talcum-free!) latex glove with black or red fruit juice, seal it, curve the fingers as required and then freeze it; fill the fingers of other gloves with suitably coloured fruit juice, seal and freeze. Just before serving, remove the latex with a sharp knife and add the "fingers" to your favourite punch.

Decorated glasses - decorate straight glasses with shapes cut out of black cardboard or black paper so that each glass appears to be a Halloween face. (You could use simple shapes like triangles for the eyes and a zigzag set of lines to represent a smiling mouth. You could also use circles for the eyes with white or orange paper stuck on to represent the pupils.)  This decoration could be done in advance and then your favorite drink could be added.

Dry ice - optionally consider dry ice to add ghostly smoke to punch bowls. (Please follow ALL necessary safety instructions.)

Halloween ice cream sodas - for those who wish to create a cauldron-type effect without using dry ice, try a Halloween take on an ice cream soda. Use an ice cream that follows the Halloween or horror color scheme (orange, purple, green or red) and then add cooled ice cream soda with the appropriate food coloring added. Decorate with (clean) fake spiders, lychee eyeball decorations or spooky sweets. As you add the soda, the mixture should froth up. It is therefore a good idea to serve this in front of your guests for maximum effect.

Notes:  Before your party, it is a good idea to test how frothy the mixture will get with your combination of ingredients, the shape of your glasses, the size of your ice cream scoops, and your choice of ice cream or sorbet. The amount of froth will depend partly on the surface area of your ice cream - several smaller scoops will produce more froth than one large scoop. It will also depend on whether you use an ice cream or a sorbet. I found that fruit sorbets had a wonderful strong color but they did not produce as many bubbles as ice cream did and the froth died down very quickly.

Note: you could use this idea in a punch bowl or individual glasses as you prefer.

Note: I found that it worked best in wider glasses so that there was a larger surface area for the interaction of the ice cream and soda. If necessary, protect nearby surfaces from any overspill.

Tip: for an adult take on this cream soda, maybe try adding alcohol to the bottom of the glass. 

This ice cream soda would make an ideal "Eye of Newt" cocktail for the Halloween murder mystery. In keeping with the orange newt colors, I decorated the lychee with orange food coloring and filled it with a rounded cube of Cantaloupe melon and a coffee bean. (It is easiest to insert the coffee bean into the melon before inserting the melon into a lychee that has been patted dry with kitchen roll; place the lychee on a cocktail stick or small skewer before adding the orange food coloring with a cocktail stick.). If you have small cocktail glasses, this would make an ideal fun "extra" drink to serve to your guests at the end of the mystery once they appreciate the references to Carlo's "deliziosi" Eye of Newt cocktails.

4.5 Fall-Themed Food that Can be Adapted for a Fantasy-Horror Meal

Fall brings with it the wonderful flavors of pumpkins, cranberries and apples. For me, autumn just wouldn't be autumn without at least a few pumpkin-based recipes.

With some ingenuity, you can take traditional fall-based recipes and make them suitable for Halloween. Or mix the fantasy feel of simple garden ingredients and give them a twist of horror.

• Baked stuffed pumpkin with black rice, red rice or wild rice, prunes, cranberries and pecans, maybe adding a touch of food coloring to ensure the stuffing is suitable dark.
• A "dark" salad using natural ingredients such as black, red or wild rice, sliced beetroot, red cabbage, black tomatoes, and pomegranate. Add a "natural" dressing - for example, use equal parts honey, vinegar, olive oil and wholegrain mustard; add salt, pepper, and thyme to taste.
• Soup served inside a carved-out pumpkin "bowl". Serve with charcoal sourdough bread or homemade bread rolls colored with food coloring. 
• Pumpkin cheesecake, mousse or ice cream served inside a scooped-out mini pumpkin; add a chocolate spider's web or cranberry sauce for the "blood".
• Pumpkin pie with Halloween pastry shapes to decorate the top.
• A cheeseboard with black-waxed and nettle-covered cheeses, purple grapes, black olives, containers of dark chutneys and charcoal crackers.

5 Our Make-Ahead Halloween Murder Mystery Party Menu (With Timings)

5.1 Starters

Choice of shop paté and salad, homemade mackerel paté with salad or melon with raspberry coulis. All three were made ahead of the party and decorated by turning them into Halloween faces. We also had a plate of homemade bread and shop-bought charcoal crackers.

Notes on timings: we made the mackerel paté the night before and refrigerated it. We arranged the starters on plates 1-2 hours before the party began and then refrigerated them. (For 13 people, it took 4 of us about an hour. 1 person spent most of this time dealing with the lychee eyes.)

5.2 Mains

Beef or vegetarian stew topped with puff pastry in a spooky shape. We served this with mashed potato and peas.

Notes on timings:

Stews are ideal make-ahead food for parties. The beef stew and vegetarian stew were made the day before and refrigerated.

The potatoes were cooked, mashed and placed in an oven-proof dish the day before and then refrigerated.

The stews were brought to room temperature before the party and then placed in the oven at the end of the starters and before rounds 3 and 4.

The puff pastry was cut into shapes before the party and placed on a greaseproof sheet. The puff pastry shapes were placed in the oven at the end of Round 3 in preparation for eating the main course at the end of Round 4. (The pastry shapes were "OK" but very slightly overdone. If I were doing this again, I would have pre-cooked them before the party and then reheated them (thoroughly) as guests were sitting down.)

The frozen peas were placed in the steamer pan before the party. At the end of the starters, the kettle was boiled. The kettle was then reboiled as guests were sitting at the table and the peas were steamed in the boiling water as we plated up the stews.

Plating the stews: as guests sat at the table, we ladled the stews into small bowls and then topped each bowl with a puff pastry Halloween shape. We then put potatoes and peas on the table for guests to serve themselves.

5.3 Desserts

Vampire Cake (Black Forest Gateau.)

Graveyard Trifle (Tia Maria, Coffee and Apricot Trifle)

Bat Poop Drops

Notes on timings:

We made the Black Forest Gateau the day before. We also made the trifle base and custard layer the day before.

On the afternoon of the murder mystery, I washed the plastic spider, bat, and skeleton hand decorations, whipped the cream and added the whipped cream to the cake and the trifle. I made the headstone out of a rice cracker, melted chocolate and icing. I also made the "blood bag" with a mix of berry juice, corn flour and a dash of red food coloring. Had I had more time (or thought about things more beforehand), I would have made fruit-flavored fake blood and placed this around the bottom of the plate and also drizzled it down the sides of the gateau.

Just as I was about to serve, I crumbled the chocolate brownie on top of the trifle and added the gravestone and the (washed) plastic spiders. Once the gateau was on the table, I added the blood bag and the bats. (Unfortunately, I forgot to add the two plasic skeleton hands that should have come up through the trifle next to the gravestone.)

I made the Bat Poop Drops the day before and kept them refrigerated.

6 Our Make-Ahead Horror Murder Mystery Party Menu (With Timings)

6.1 Starters

Devilled eggs or pate. These plates were put together a couple of hours before the party and refrigerated. Two edible eyes made the devilled eggs into a spooky face.

6.2 Mains

"Ghoulash" with mashed potatoes and peas.

The timings are similar to those given for the beef stew, potatoes and peas under 5.2. (See Halloween party mains.)

6.3 Desserts

Our wonderful friend, Sharon, brought us three horror-themed puddings that she had made in advance: Chocolate cheesecake with creepy sweets, "Tirama-boo" and Austrian Horror Cake.