75 Halloween Dessert Ideas

October 10, 2016
Photo: Jonny Valiant; Styling: Ed Gallagher
No tricks to these treats! The best part about Halloween desserts is that they're basically your favorite treats disguised as Halloween goodies! You don't need super special icing skills to make these recipes shine. Simple instructions, a few Test Kitchen tips, and a love of fun holiday foods are all you need to get started. Keep these Halloween dessert ideas in mind when you need to bring treats to school or the office this year.
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Black Sesame Cupcakes

Photo: Caitlin Bensel
Black Sesame Cupcakes Recipe

There's nothing artificial about these dramatically hued treats. Supermoist (and whole-grain) chocolate cupcakes get their blackout color from black sesame seeds and antioxidant-rich dark cocoa powder. These desserts are delicious and better for you, with every bit of fun, festive flair you crave.

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Halloween Spider Cookies

Sara Tane
Halloween Spider Cookies Recipe

Landing somewhere between adorable and slightly spooky, these Halloween spider cookies are sure to fulfill all your creepy-crawly sweet needs for your upcoming Halloween festivities. Using a classic cut-out butter cookie dough keeps the edges of your spider cookies shape neat and clean—no worries about the cookies expanding when they bake. Decorate these Halloween cut-out cookies with black gel icing, royal icing, candy eyes, orangle and black sprinkles, or whatever fun decorations you have on hand. These cookies make for a playful, spooky food craft that grown-ups and kids alike can enjoy.

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Mini Ghost Cupcakes

Photo: Mark Thomas
Mini Ghost Cupcakes Recipe

Decorate mini chocolate cupcakes for the perfect Halloween treats by topping them with whipped topping in the shape of spooky ghosts and chocolate chips for their ghastly expressions. These cupcakes are perfectly portable and great to bring along to a your next Halloween bash! 

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Deserted Graveyard Cake

Photo: Jonny Valiant; Styling: Ed Gallagher
Deserted Graveyard Cake Recipe

Prepare this decadent, chocolate-frosted cake for a festive Halloween dessert. 

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Mummified Candy-Corn Cake

Photo: Jonny Valiant; Styling: Ed Gallagher
Mummified Candy-Corn Cake Recipe

This festive candy corn-colored cake is sure to impress your Halloween guests. 

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White Chocolate 'Butterfinger' Bars

Photo: Andrew McCaul; Styling: Gerri Williams for James Reps
White Chocolate 'Butterfinger' Bars Recipe
Jessica Segarra, 25, Tampa, Fla., thenovicechefblog.com
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Trick or Treat Cupcakes

Photo: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Jan Gautro
Trick or Treat Cupcakes Recipe
This cupcake is the showcase for our Halloween thrills. For the parade of goblins, ghosts, and monsters looking for something sweet, we top it with anything we can find on the candy aisle. There's no trick to this treat—it's scrumptious any time of year.

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Lookie-Lookie Cookie Pops

Oxmoor House
Lookie-Lookie Cookie Pops Recipe
These fun, kid-friendly, and super yummy cookie pops are the perfect treat for Halloween! Your friends and family will not be able to resist one–or two, or three.

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Chocolate Spider Cupcakes

Photo: Romulo Yanes; Styling: Rachel Haas
Chocolate Spider Cupcakes Recipe

These spooky spiderweb cupcakes for Halloween are easier to decorate than you think. Simply frost in white icing, then pipe black icing in concentric circles and drag a toothpick through them to create the webbed effect. For kid-friendly cupcakes, use water instead of bourbon in the frosting.

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Spun-Sugar Cobwebs

Photo: Thomas J. Story
Spun-Sugar Cobwebs Recipe

Spun-sugar recipes typically involve flinging hot liquid sugar across a setup of dowels and newspaper. It's messy and, frankly, a little bit frightening. Here's a much easier method that requires nothing more than a few forks and a small upturned bowl, and you can do it on your kitchen counter. The results--golden, airy sugar webs--make excellent Halloween cupcake toppers. (This recipe makes extra, so you can choose the prettiest ones.) For a bigger cobweb to top a cake, just use a large bowl. Make sure you do this on a dry day, though; humidity will make the webs collapse.

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Scary Spiders

Photo: Ryan Benyi, Charles Schiller; Styling: Karen Tack
Scary Spiders Recipe
Transform packaged snack cakes into creepy crawlers. These treats take minutes and are a perfect Halloween-themed activity for cookie-loving kiddos.

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Ghost Cookies

Sara Tane
Ghost Cookies Recipe

Prepare for a  sweet scare when these adorable Halloween ghost cookies are all iced, decorated, and ready to party. Super easy and kid-friendly to make, these butter cut-out cookies coated with royal icing are the perfect dessert for your Halloween spread. Candy eyeballs add a playful, whimsical touch to these spooky treats, but you could also use black icing to draw eyes on your ghost cookies. Using a classic cut-out butter cookie dough keeps the edges of your ghost cookies shape neat and clean—no worries about the cookies expanding when they bake. Whip up a batch with the kids and let them go to town with the decorating for a fun Halloween kitchen activity.

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Frankenstein Cookies 

Photo: Darcy Lenz
Frankenstein Cookies  Recipe

Starting with refrigerated, store-bought cookie dough, these cooky Frankenstein cookies are an easy Halloween baking project to whip up this year. That said, packaged cookie dough is made to spread, so if you’d rather your Frankenstein cookies have rectangular or otherwise shaped faces (as opposed to these round-faced cuties), you can use a classic cut-out cookie dough that will better hold its shape.

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Pumpkin-Chocolate Brownies

Photo: Greg Dupree; Styling: Heather Chadduck Hillegas
Pumpkin-Chocolate Brownies Recipe

TIP: Let fresh-baked brownies chill, uncovered, overnight. For a perfect slice, cut while they're cold. Serve at room temperature.

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Graveyard Cake

Photo: Mark Thomas
Graveyard Cake Recipe

Halloween desserts definitely call for having a little extra fun in the kitchen. This kinda-cute, kinda-creepy Graveyard Cake is easy to make, fun to decorate (so recruit the kids’ help), and is sure to be a perfectly spooky centerpiece for any Halloween dessert table.

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Candy Corn Cobs

Candy Corn Cobs Recipe

Make this too-cute Halloween food craft with just two ingredients and a bit of assembly. Using prepared cookie dough as a “cob,” simply press kernels of candy corn into place to create a sugary look-alike of corn on the cob. Making these candy corn cobs is an easy and fun Halloween project for kids, and the completed corny confections could be used as playful name card holders for a Halloween dinner party.

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Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Tahini Glaze

Sara Tane
Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Tahini Glaze Recipe

What better fall-inspired dessert to make than this tahini-glazed pumpkin bundt cake. A medley of fragrant, ground spices enhance the rich sweetness of this incredibly moist bundt cake. Topped with a toasty, perfectly bittersweet tahini glaze, this  easy to make and comforting fall dessert is the perfect centerpiece for your next dinner party, Halloween gathering, or special occasion.

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Severed Hand Pies

Photo: Greg Dupree; Prop Styling: Blakeslee Giles
Severed Hand Pies Recipe

This freaky-delicious treat serves up classic flavors with a Halloween twist. Impress your guests with sweet cherry filling in flakey puff pastry... in the shape of a human hand.

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Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies with Brown Butter

Sara Tane
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies with Brown Butter Recipe

Brown butter takes these rich, seasonal pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to the next level, adding a nutty, fragrant flavor that is absolutely perfect for fall. Canned pumpkin puree lends moisture to these fluffy, cake-like treats while warm chocolate chips fill every bite. Make these for a Halloween party or a fall dinner party, and be sure to store any leftovers in an airtight container.

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Mummy Buckeyes

Photo: Caitlin Bensel
Mummy Buckeyes Recipe

Our two-bite treats are scary-simple to make and a ghoulishly good addition to your spread of haunted sweets. When it comes time to wrap the mummies in chocolate, let the kids help out for a fun holiday craft.

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Lemon-Black Sesame Baked Doughnuts

Photo: Daniel Agee; Food Styling: Tori Cox; Prop Styling: Kashara Johnson
Lemon-Black Sesame Baked Doughnuts Recipe

If you need a break from rainbow-smattered sweets and unicorn-coated everything, these deliciously dark doughnuts are exactly what you’re looking for. A bright lemony glaze balances the warm toasty flavors delivered by black sesame seeds for a balanced, not-too-sweet doughnut. Being an oven-baked doughnut, this recipe is perfect for the first-time doughnut maker or anyone who’s not trying to spend their Saturday morning cleaning up a deep-fry station in their kitchen. We used black food dye to intensify the darkness of these doughnuts, but feel free to leave it out if you’d prefer. Beyond being an incredibly tasty way to boycott rainbow foods, these black sesame doughnuts are the perfect treat to whip out for Halloween. 

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Pumpkin Coffee Cake with Maple Glaze

Photo: Sara Tane
Pumpkin Coffee Cake with Maple Glaze Recipe

With a rich, gooey pumpkin spice filling, buttery pecan streusel topping, and maple glaze, this fluffy and moist pumpkin coffee cake is sure to impress. Perfect for any occasion, from your next fall brunch to a Halloween party, this coffee cake is easy to make and full of toasty fall flavors.

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Frosted Brown Butter Blondies

Photo: Brian Woodcock; Styling: Heather Chadduck Hillegas
Frosted Brown Butter Blondies Recipe

Frosted Brown Butter Blondies

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Red Velvet Cobweb Cupcakes

Photo: Jonny Valiant; Styling: Ed Gallagher
Red Velvet Cobweb Cupcakes Recipe

These festive Red Velvet Cobweb Cupcakes are as delicoious as they are detailed. 

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Cinnamon-Cider Candied Apples

Photo: Romulo Yanes; Styling: Rachel Haas
Cinnamon-Cider Candied Apples Recipe

Wash apples well to remove any waxy coating, and dry thoroughly before dipping them. Work quickly, but if the syrup begins to set, you can reheat it over low heat to liquefy.

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Monster Brownies

E. Spencer Toy
Monster Brownies Recipe

Your little human monsters will love decorating brownies with chocolate, marshmallows, and M&M's to make these sweet treats. For the base, we doubled the recipe for Dark Chocolate Brownies, baking it in a 9- by 13-in. pan and omitting the glaze. Thin, flat chocolate bars work best for the faces.

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Bat Cake

Time Inc. Video Studio
Bat Cake Recipe

For the Halloween crafter inside all of this, this simple Halloween sheet cake is a fun, easy dessert to make. Devil’s food cake is very dark chocolaty color, but a red velvet cake would look just as fitting and festive for the bat, too. Piping bags and tips are found in craft stores or specialty baking shops. Be sure to cut the cake rounds in the prescribed order so that the bat’s head with ears comes out as 1 of the cuts.
 

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Frankenstein Cookie Bars

Thomas J. Story
Frankenstein Cookie Bars Recipe

These bars make a fun Halloween treat, and they're very flavorful: the green tea frosting cloaks a chewy-soft coconut-lime cookie. They're easy enough that the kids can help you make them.

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Skeleton Cupcakes

Photo: Mark Thomas
Skeleton Cupcakes Recipe
Stop the presses! These too-cute cupcakes are a must-bake for your Halloween party. There's room for creativity on these delicious desserts, so make the faces fun or scary--your choice.

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Ogre-Eye Cookies

Photo: Mark Thomas
Ogre-Eye Cookies Recipe
No Halloween party is complete without these cute cookies that, thanks to licorice strips, white chocolate chips and brown M & Ms, look just like monster eyeballs.
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Scissor Fingers Cake

Oxmoor House
Scissor Fingers Cake Recipe
Just a few little almond slices make these ladyfingers have quite the fingernails!

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Red-Velvet Cake Balls with White Chocolate

Photo: John Kernick
Red-Velvet Cake Balls with White Chocolate Recipe
Dipped in white chocolate, these red-velvet cake balls are perfect for turning into eyeballs on Halloween. With a steady hand and food coloring, David Burtka paints detailed irises and pupils on each one; for the less artistically inclined, an M and M pressed into the white chocolate before it sets makes for a quick-and-easy creepy alternative.

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Pumpkin-Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches

Photo: Andrew McCaul; Styling: Gerri Williams for James Reps
Pumpkin-Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches Recipe
These whoopie pies give a whole knew meaning to cake and ice cream! Vanilla ice cream is sandwiched between the festive orange cakes that are pack with pumpkin flavor.
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Chocolate Cupcakes with Meringue Ghosts

Photo: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Linda Hirst    
Chocolate Cupcakes with Meringue Ghosts Recipe

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Mini Caramel Apples

Photo: Thayer Allyson Gowdy; Styling: Miranda Jones
Mini Caramel Apples Recipe
You get all the satisfaction of a caramel apple in one bite and without a messy chin. If decorating with twigs, make sure twigs are food-safe or use craft sticks.

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Spider Web Cake

Spider Web Cake Recipe

This incredibly fudgy flourless chocolate cake is a much better way to satisfy your own spooky sweet cravings than dipping into your kids’ Halloween candy. Dark and delightful, this rich and chocolatey cake only requires five ingredients and about an hour to pull together.

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Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies