Quick and easy Halloween recipes

Serve up some spooky fun this Halloween with three of our favourite quick and easy recipes, that are frightfully satisfying yet so easy to make.

From savoury snacks to sweet treats, these simple ideas are sure to delight and entertain guests of all ages, whatever the nature of your Halloween bash.

Mummy Dogs

Serves 4

• 1 sheet ready-to-roll puff pastry dough or Crescent dough

• 10 hotdogs

• Ketchup or mustard, for the eyes

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6. Unroll the dough and cut into ¼ inch strips, these will form the bandages. Wrap the pieces of dough around the hotdogs, letting them overlap and cross over. The hotdogs do not need to be completely covered; the gaps will look like the mummy peeking out from its bandages.

Place the wrapped hotdogs onto a lined baking sheet and bake in the oven for ten to twelve minutes or until the bandages are golden brown and the hotdog is cooked through.

Remove from the oven and add eyes to your ‘mummy dogs’ by placing two small dots of ketchup or mustard peeking through the bandages. You could also use candy eyes if you prefer.

Healthy Halloween Peppers

Adapted from BBC Good Food

Serves 4

• 4 small peppers (orange to resemble pumpkins)

• 25g pine nuts

• 1 tbsp olive oil or rapeseed oil

• 1 red onion, chopped

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed

• 1 small aubergine, chopped into small pieces

• 200g mixed grains (bulgur wheat and quinoa work well, but you can alter to individual tastes)

• 2 tbsp tomato purée

• Zest of 1 lemon

• Bunch of basil, chopped

Cut the tops off the peppers but keep these to one side – these will form the lids of the ‘pumpkins’ later. Remove the seeds and, using a sharp knife, carve spooky Halloween faces into the sides of the peppers.

Heat the oven to 200°C /180°C fan/gas 6. Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until golden brown and set aside. Heat the oil in a pan and cook the onion for eight to ten minutes until softened. Stir in the garlic and aubergine and cook for a further ten minutes until all the veg is soft.

Add the mixed grains into the pan along with the tomato purée and warm through. Remove from the heat and add the lemon zest, basil and pine nuts. Fill each pepper with the grain mix and replace the lids. Put the peppers in a deep roasting tin with the carved faces upwards. Cover with foil and bake for thirty-five minutes. Serve piping hot.

Floating Ghost Cupcakes

• 175g/6oz plain four

• 40g/1 ½oz cocoa powder

• 1½ tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

• 250g/9oz caster sugar

• Pinch salt

• 100ml/3½fl oz sunflower oil

• 2 large free-range eggs

• 2 tbsp milk

• 125ml/4fl oz boiling water

• 18 cupcake cases

• 18 lollypops

• 1 packet white fondant icing

• 1 tube writing icing

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4 and line muffin tins with the paper cases.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl, and add the caster sugar and salt. Add the milk, oil and eggs and beat the mixture. Add the water and beat until smooth.

Scoop the batter into the paper cases so there is an even amount in each case. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for twenty to twenty-five minutes. The cakes should be well risen, and a wooden skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean. Transfer to a wire cooling rack and leave the cakes to cool completely before decorating.

Once the cakes have cooled, insert a lollypop into the centre of each cupcake. Thinly roll out the white fondant icing and cut out eighteen circles. Drape these over the lollypops to form the ghost shape. Using the black writing icing, pipe eyes and a mouth onto your ghosts.

What’s your favourite Halloween recipe? Let us know in the comments!