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Five Halloween Food Ideas for an Epic Middle School Halloween Party
As summer draws to a close and back to school and autumn activities make their way onto our radars, it’s time to begin thinking about Halloween and all that comes with it! If you need some Halloween food ideas, you’re in the right place! Everyone from tiny tots to full-grown adults love some creative Halloween party foods. Here’s the story of a Covid Halloween party that will inspire you to make some simple and creative party foods this year!
Halloween Party For All Ages
It’s great to be a grandma, but mom-duties are still in full practice here! You see, I still have a middle-school son living at home. Last October, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, we found ourselves in a Halloween pickle. Tick-or-treating was off the table due to Covid, so we needed to come up with something fun to do so that we didn’t miss out on all the spooky fun! Instead of dressing up and heading out to the streets for candy gathering, we opted to have a private Halloween party with a few friends who felt safe to gather without masks. No party is complete without some amazing Halloween party foods!
Halloween Candy is Required!
The first thing we needed to address with a pack of preteen boys was the need for candy! I mean, part of the fun of Halloween is the sweet, sugary haul, right!? If you want to skip the haul, no worries. But for my son, it was a must! Since this was a small party with just six boys, I opted to ask the parents if they would bring a small goodie bag for each boy filled with whatever treats they wanted. I purchased Halloween-themed string backpacks at the dollar store for each kid and filled them with the individual goodie bags (you could also have each mom bring a bag of her child’s favorite candy and divide that up). We didn’t just hand those bags out, though. Instead, we made them work for it. More on that later!
Halloween Party Food
Next up, we needed to feed the critters! I had so much fun prepping the halloween party food. Tucker helped out with much of the food prep. It was a perfect opportunity to get him involved and in the kitchen! Gotta love a boy who knows his way around the kitchen, right? For the main course, we served:
Halloween Party Food #1
Mummy Dogs
These were so easy and fun to create. You grab a can of crescent rolls and some candy eyeballs. Cut the crescent rolls into strips and wrap them around the hot dogs, leaving a small space open for the eyes.
Bake them per the directions on the crescent roll can. When they’ve had a minute to cool, use a dab of ketchup to stick the eyes onto them before serving. Voila! Creepy hotdog mummies!
Halloween Party Food #2
Shrunken Potato Heads
If your kiddo likes to carve pumpkins, he will love to make these fun little tater heads. We used potatoes that measured in about 3” each. After a quick cleanup, we carved simple faces into the raw potatoes using paring knives and the tip of a vegetable peeler for the eyesockets.
We added a few minor cuts and blemishes for good measure, then sprinkled them with coarse salt and pepper and threw them in the oven for a good bake. They come out looking like shriveled little shrunken heads. The result was a creepy and fantastic Halloween party food, and the kids loved them! We served them up with a dish of ranch dressing because every kid loves ranch these days! You could get even more creative and make a loaded potato dip with sour cream, but my kiddo thought ranch was just the ticket!
Halloween Party Food #3
A Puking Pumpkin Veggie Tray
This Halloween party food idea is easy-peasy! I had Tucker carve out a small pumpkin. He had a little oopsie when carving the eye on the left, so we made a last-minute adjustment and popped in a ping pong eyeball to give it an authentic creepy look.
The puke coming from his mouth is just veggie dip with a couple of drops of green food coloring for effect. To serve, I slid a small bowl up to the edge of the pumpkin’s mouth and intentionally slopped some dip out of the mouth and into the serving bowl. It worked great and is one of my favorite simple dishes from the evening! And yes – it even got a pack of boys to eat some veggies at the Halloween party! Parenting win!
Halloween Party Food #4
Halloween Pasta Salad
When I found a bag of Halloween-shaped pasta at my local Homegoods, I knew it was a perfect fit for a Halloween Party Food! Use your favorite pasta salad recipe with this festive pasta for a perfect pasta salad themed for the event!
Here’s my recipe:
Spooky Pasta Salad
1 small box of pasta (I usually use tri-color rotini)
1 bottle of Kraft Greek Vinaigrette Dressing
Assorted colored peppers (I usually use 1 red, 1 green, 1 yellow, 1 orange)
Red onion, chopped
1 pkg of Hormel Mini Pepperoni
8 oz of crumbled feta cheese
1 can of black olives, drained
Cook the pasta according to the directions on the package. While cooking, chop peppers and onions. After draining the cooked pasta, rinse it with cold water to cool it to room temp. Mix in the chopped peppers and onions along with the Pepperoni, Feta, and the olives. Mix in about ½ the dressing, then refrigerate. Just before serving, mix in the remainder of the dressing. Super easy and super yummy!
More Good Reading: Life Lessons From a Butterfly About Being Humble and Kind
Halloween Party Food #5
A Bowl of Bones!
Finally, the kids loved this handy little side idea. Cheetos released skeleton bone cheese puffs in White Cheddar flavor. I could only find one bag at my local grocery store, so we mixed it with standard Cheetos and put it in this cool, talking treat bowl.
The eyes light up, and the skeleton says cheeky Halloween phrases each time someone reaches in for a handful. The boys loved it! Thank you, HomeGoods!
Halloween Party Food BONUS
Delicious Desserts!
In addition to dinner, we needed some spookylicious Halloween party food treats that the kids could munch on throughout the evening. In the spirit of Halloween, we needed to have sweets, and lots of them, so we served:
Witch Vomit
My adult daughter came over a few days before the party to help with this fun treat. We melted some candy melt chocolate in Halloween colors.
We plopped it onto some silicone baking sheets and placed a sucker stick in the middle of each blob (give the stick a spin to make sure the chocolate covers it completely). Then go to town sprinkling the blobs with whatever candy sprinkles you have laying around and some candy corns for good measure. Halloween sprinkles are fun, but you can use up anything you have lying around your baking cupboard. Be sure to let the candy sit until it’s good and hard before peeling the vomit from the silicone sheets.
I found this darling witch’s cauldron to display the vomit, filled it with dried navy beans, garnished with some plastic spiders from the dollar store, and then just stuck the sucker sticks in the beans. Everyone loves a good blob of candy chocolate!
Witch Fingers
As long as you have the candy melt out, you can make some of these amazing Witch Fingers. I mean, everyone loves a good witch finger, right?
Once you have your candy melted, swirl a large pretzel rod in green, then lay flat on one of your silicone baking mats. While the candy melt is still soft, place a sliced almond at the tip for a fingernail and let it harden. Easy-peasy, right?
Graveyard Pudding Cups
And finally, we finished off the dessert table with these super cute pudding cups! A small portion of chocolate pudding layered with whipped cream and topped with chocolate sprinkles gives the perfect illusion of dirt.
I used these cute little parfait cups and found some creepy green candy hands at my local baking supply store to top them.
Halloween Party Food BONUS
A BOO-tiful Beverage
Black Lemonade
All this celebrating will make a kid thirsty, and no list of Halloween party foods would be complete without something to drink, so we mixed up a batch (or two) of this delightful black lemonade.
We served it up with some dry ice to give it just the right spooky effect. Check out this excellent resource for how to serve your drink with dry ice safely!
Every Good Party Needs Games
Now that we’ve conquered the Halloween party food ideas, it’s time to talk about some activities! Even middle school boys had fun with these great Halloween games. We played Eyeball Pong with ping-pong balls from the dollar store. The boys had a blast bouncing the balls down a long hallway at my house into various orange and black cups.
Next up was the skeleton hands relay race. The boys lined up for a basic relay race using one skeleton hand salad tong that I found at the local dollar store. Each boy had to carry a raw egg on one skeleton hand, run around a pumpkin at the other end of the yard, and return to hand off the egg to the next player’s skeleton hand. The first team to win won theater-sized boxes of candy.
In the theme of both sugar and spooky fun, we played the old favorite Oreo Face Race with a twist. We made mummy-themed Oreos by putting stripes of melted white candy across each cookie and topping it with candy eyes. In this game, each kid places an Oreo on his forehead, and then when the leader says “GO,” the player needs to move the cookie from his forehead down into his mouth without using his hands. The first kid to eat his whole cookie wins! We played several rounds because everyone loves this game and couldn’t get enough! The best entertainment was watching the boys contort their faces, all in the name of Halloween fun!
The Grand Finale!
You have waited patiently and sifted through all of the details for Halloween Party Foods and games. Now I know you’re just waiting for info on how we handed out those bags of candy! What followed was undoubtedly the boys’ favorite part of the night. You see, we live in the woods. We have several acres of heavily wooded land with walking trails throughout. Before the boys arrived, my team of volunteers (aka my adult kids) came over and decorated the woods with creepy glowing eyes and giant spiderwebs. They also staked out places along the trails to hide from the boys.
Each boy was handed a flashlight and told that their bag of candy awaited them along the path. The string backpacks were hanging on tree branches, each with a glow stick to identify its location. We had one rule. The boys had to stick together until they made it to the end of the trail, and they were required to come back together with all of the candy bags. This rule ensured that no one ended up getting stuck finding that last bag of goodies alone.
Oh, the shrieks of joy and terror we heard as the kids made their way through the woods to find those bags! The grown kids loved playing a part and spooking the boys, and the middle-schoolers fell for it! It didn’t take long for them to race through the darkness, but this was a win for the adult kids and the middle schoolers! So much fun.
Thank you for tagging along on our Halloween party! The boys loved every minute, and this one will go down in history as a happy substitute for trick-or-treating when the world was shut down!
Click HERE for more themed party ideas for teens and adults!
