Most Halloween food is a normal thing with a plastic spider on it. These are the ones actually worth making — two of them British traditions older than the festival's American version, and one of them a way of not throwing away two kilos of perfectly good vegetable.
Toffee apples, set properly
The classic, and the one people most often get wrong. The failure is always the same: toffee that stays sticky instead of setting to a hard shell.
The fix is temperature. You need the hard crack stage, 149–154°C, and you need a thermometer. Guessing does not work.
- 8 firm apples, 400g granulated sugar, 100ml water, 1 tbsp golden syrup, a splash of vinegar
- Wash the apples in hot water and dry them thoroughly. Supermarket apples are waxed, and toffee slides straight off wax. This is the second most common failure
- Push a skewer into each through the stalk end
- Dissolve the sugar in the water over low heat before boiling — undissolved crystals cause graininess
- Add syrup and vinegar, boil without stirring to 149–154°C
- Dip, twist, let the excess run off, set on baking parchment
Molten sugar at 150°C causes serious burns and sticks to skin. Keep children well back at the dipping stage.
Soul cakes
Small, spiced and enriched — closer to a biscuit than a cake, traditionally marked with a cross on top. One cake, one soul.
These were the currency of souling, the medieval English practice of going door to door offering prayers for a household's dead in exchange for food. They are the direct ancestor of the sweets in a trick-or-treat bucket, and they taste of nutmeg and cinnamon rather than pure sugar.
- 175g butter, 175g caster sugar, 3 egg yolks, 450g plain flour
- 1 tsp mixed spice, ½ tsp nutmeg, ½ tsp cinnamon, 100g currants, a little milk
- Cream butter and sugar, beat in yolks, fold in the dry ingredients and currants, bring together with milk
- Roll to about 1cm, cut rounds, score a cross on each
- 180°C for 15 minutes until pale gold
Bake them on 1 or 2 November, which is when soulers actually went — All Saints' and All Souls' Days, not the 31st.
The pumpkin you just gutted
A carving pumpkin is watery and bland compared to a culinary squash, but throwing away two kilos of it is still a waste.
Seeds. Rinse, dry, toss with oil and salt, roast at 180°C for 15–20 minutes. Smoked paprika is a good addition.
Flesh. Roast it hard — 200°C, cut into chunks, oiled — to drive off water and concentrate what flavour there is. Then use it for soup with plenty of onion, garlic, chilli and stock, or blitz it into a curry base.
Do not attempt a pie with carving-pumpkin flesh. It is too wet and too mild. That is what culinary varieties are for.
One caveat: if the pumpkin has sat outside with a candle in it, or has been out for days, compost it rather than eat it.
Party food that is not a gimmick
People are drinking, it is October, and it is cold. Serve something substantial.
A big pot of chilli or a beef stew in bowls beats an entire table of themed nonsense, and it is what people actually remember. If you want atmosphere on the table, do it with candles and dark serving dishes rather than green food colouring.
Mulled cider is the correct drink and takes ten minutes.
More on running the evening in the party guide, and serving kit in Party & Tableware.
The Cornish option
In Cornwall the night belonged to Allan apples — large, highly polished red apples given as gifts and slept on under the pillow to dream of a future spouse. Children considered it a real misfortune to go to bed on Allantide without one.
Buy the largest, reddest apples you can find, polish them properly, and hand them out. It is the easiest tradition on this page and the only one that requires no cooking at all.