After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

Halloween party recipes for the un-dead

This gruesome meatloaf hand makes a great Halloween conversation starter. Photo by Alexis Stoymenoff.

Throwing a Halloween party this year? Having trouble thinking of what to put on the menu? Well, here are three fun recipes to both tantalize and terrify your guests.

Dead Hand Zombie Meatloaf

This creepy-looking entrée combines comfort food with zombie lore. Death has never tasted so delicious. 

Start with your favourite meatloaf – any recipe using between one and two pounds of ground beef should suffice. I used a variation of a standard meatloaf recipe that goes a little something like this:

1 ½ lb ground beef
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 cup of milk
¼ tsp freshly ground pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 white or yellow onion
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
½ cup of dry bread crumbs
½ tsp dry mustard
½ tsp salt
½ cup of ketchup or barbecue sauce
4-5 slices of cheese (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350o F. Chop most of the onion finely, leaving one thick slice with its inner rings intact. Separate the innermost rings from the outer one, and set both parts aside.

In a large bowl, combine the remaining chopped onions with the rest of the ingredients - except for the ketchup. Mix well.

Prepare a baking sheet with foil or wax paper. Using your hands (or a hand-shaped gelatin mold) to sculpt your beef mixture into the correct shape on the pan, creating long fingers and a part of the wrist. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect – this is a dead body part, not a hand model.

The meatloaf before it goes in the oven. Photo by Alexis Stoymenoff.

Take the inner rings from the onion slice – in one piece – and shove them into the end of the wrist to create the semblance of a severed bone. Cut the remaining onion slices into small rounded pieces, using scissors or a paring knife, and lay them into the fingertips as nails.

Spread barbecue sauce and/or ketchup over the top, covering the surface completely. Bake for 40 – 45 minutes, then remove from the oven and add thin slices of cheese to the top, if desired. Return to oven and bake for another 15 minutes, or until it is no longer pink in the centre.

Mad Eye Martini

Here’s an easy – and yummy – take on a lychee martini that looks like it was cooked up in a mad scientist’s laboratory. You can find out how to make this recipe and others in a video tutorial on the Hpnotiq website.

Screen capture from YouTube video tutorial.

Martini:

½ oz Hpnotiq liqueur
1 oz vodka
2 oz lychee juice

Eyeball garnish:

1 canned lychee in syrup, drained
¼ tsp strawberry or raspberry jam
1 blueberry

Pour the liqueur, vodka and lychee juice into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake well, and strain into a chilled martini glass.

For the eyeballs, dry out a lychee and fill the cavity with jam. Push the blueberry into the hole, then skewer the eyeball with a cocktail pick to keep it together.

Graveyard Pudding Cups

There are several variations of this recipe floating around, but it’s easy enough to improvise. If you’re up for a challenge, try this recipe for dark chocolate graveyard pots de crème.

Photo by Leigh Beisch.

If you'd like to try something simpler, here are the basics:

Pudding:

3 ½ cups cold milk
2 packages Jello Chocolate Flavour Instant Pudding (4 serving size)
1 tub Cool Whip (500 mL)
1 package Oreo cookies, crushed

Tombstone Decorations:

Rectangular or oval shaped cookies, preferably without a pattern/words
Decorative icing or gel

Pour milk into a large bowl and add pudding mixes. Beat with electric mixer on low speed for two minutes, or until blended. Gently stir in Cool Whip and half of the cookies (if you want chunky pudding).

Spoon mixture into small cups, making sure they’re large enough to fit a cookie tombstone. Use a fine-tipped icing or gel to write messages (like “R.I.P.”) on the upper half of the tombstone cookies, leaving the bottom half to be submerged in pudding. Plant the tombstone in the pudding cup and garnish with remaining cookie crumble and other candy.

Related articles: 

Halloween pumpkin carving: a how-to guide

More in Recipes

Making fresh bread at home with the kids

Whole wheat Focaccia bread with rosemary I like to make bread at home on the weekends. This recipe is straight forward for home baking and a nice introduction to bread making. Getting the kids...

Spanish style clams with sherry, garlic and parsley

Serve as an appy or toss with pasta for a full meal
Vietnamese inspired calamari salad with mint and mango

Vietnamese inspired calamari salad with mint and mango

Fresh mint ups the flavour content while chile sweet and sour dressing gets a kick from the chili
Speak up about this article on Facebook or Twitter. Do this by liking Vancouver Observer on Facebook or following us @Vanobserver on Twitter. We'd love to hear from you.