Halloween is a great opportunity to have lots of fun during the darker days of autumn. Children love the excitement of dressing up, eating chocolate and candy and even going to a Halloween party. One way to cajole children into eating food is to scare them with a fright-night feast.

Treats on a Halloween menu might include bloody cranberry juice, piped chocolate spider webs and dead-man’s fingers, slender biscuits that use half a blanched almond painted red with strawberry jam as the realistic finger nail.

Here are some more ideas for spooky recipes.

1. Eyeball pasta – top a serving of blood and guts (tomato sauce and coloured tagliatelle) with mini mozzarella balls set inside halved tomatoes and specked with either half a pea or a black olive.

30 things to do with a pumpkin

From tagine to cake, 20 delicious seasonal recipes for pumpkin and butternut squash

• Seasonal food guide

More kids' food

• School grub ... in the pub

• How to make popcorn and crisps

• Kids in the Kitchen: homemade lemonade

• Kids in the kitchen: lamb koftes

• Humbugs, mints, gums and our Top 20 sweets

Related Links

• Children's recipes: anyone for eyeballs with green slime?

• Children's recipes: Witches’ Feast

2. Hedgehogs and slugs – one baked potato per child, halve, keeping the skin intact, scoop out the potato and mash with grated cheddar cheese. Refill the potato skins, spike up the potato with a fork to look like spines, pop a couple of raisins in for eyes and grill for 2-3 minutes until lightly browned, serve with cooked cocktail sausages (slugs) and broccoli (slugs love broccoli).

3. Toffee apple cakes – peel, core and finely chop 2-3 eating apples. Make up fairy cake mix and add the apple, 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a handful of chopped vanilla fudge, fill up muffin cases and bake at 180C/gas mark 4 for 20-25 minutes. These can be iced and decorated or just served warm.

4. Eyeball tarts or cocktail – for the tarts either make or buy jam tarts for the base. Drain a tin of stoned lychees and place a green seedless grape into the hole where the stone would have been, these become the ‘eyeball’. Place in the centre of the jam tarts. For cocktails, use blackcurrant squash or "bloody" cranberry juice and pop in some eyeballs, they will sink to the bottom but look very effective.

5. Cauldron slime – make lime jelly and as it’s starting to set add some jellied worms and spiders from the sweet shop, and some ‘eyeballs’ (see above).

6. Chocolate brains – popcorn, either bought or popped in the microwave or pan. Melt milk, dark or white chocolate in the microwave on medium in 10-second bursts or in a pan, stirring until fully melted. Dunk the popcorn into the chocolate to half coat it and press together to form clumps; leave to set on baking parchment.

7. Witches fingers – breadsticks, either home made or bought – place a dollop of tomato ketchup on the tip and stick on an almond sliver to look like a bloodied nail. Serve with guacamole as slime dip.

8. Bat droppings – classic chocolate fridge crunchy recipe, rolled into balls for droppings. Crush 200g digestive biscuits, melt 100g butter with 2 tablespoons honey and 100g dark chocolate, mix with the crushed digestives and form into small balls, chill to firm up. Serve with a plastic bat on the side. Save some for the adults, as they are lovely with coffee.

Explore Food & Drink

• Gordon Ramsay

• Heston Blumenthal

• Recipes

• Wine

• Real Food

• Drinks

• Anjum Anand

• Eating Out

• Video Recipes

Times Recommends

• Top Ten most searched for recipes
• Chalet Chef 2010: the winning menus
• Gin and pomegranate jellies