Bewitch the food in your pantry and refrigerator, and perk up your family with a spooky and creative Halloween breakfast. Pep up their favorite foods with holiday-inspired names and special ingredients from hidden chambers in the pantry. Delight even the groggiest of kids and husbands with enchanting dishes and drinks. Plan a pre-festivity breakfast on Halloween day, or use these easy recipes for a brunch-style Halloween party for kids and adults. Your family and friends with think you’re simply magical.
Beverages and Fruits
Hypnotize your family with a bold Halloween breakfast table. Set out a black tablecloth with homemade ghost, black cat and witch decorations. Set out the morning beverages. Serve your usual milk, but add spider cutouts or ghostly black eyes and a mouth to the container. Add new labels to juice containers, and transform orange juice into “pumpkin juice” and tomato juice into “Dracula’s brew.” For tweens and older children, you could use creepier words on the labels including blood, poison or toxic.
Scoop out fruit with a round melon ball scoop to create “eyes” for a Halloween breakfast fruit salad. Include grapes (cut in half for preschoolers and toddlers) in a variety of colors. For color and crunch, add pomegranate seed. Add ghost-shaped marshmallows or mini marshmallows. Serve in hollowed-out oranges with the tops cut off. Draw three triangles — one for the nose in the middle and two above for the eyes. Add a jack-o’-lantern smile. If you have more time, cut shapes out of grape fruit roll-ups and attach them to the oranges with toothpicks.
Stick an eye, nose or mouth into an unpeeled banana if you are pressed for time, or as a funny gag to put in someone’s lunch bag for the day.
Meats and Protein
Capture a batch of crawling caterpillars, in the form of turkey, vegan or low-fat sausages. Cut the sausage into five or six pieces. Alternate the sausage with blueberries or the fruit of your choice on toothpicks to make the caterpillars. Add tiny pimento or olive eyes. Decorate the sausage caterpillars with dots of ketchup and mustard. Serve on top of sliced kiwi fruit or honeydew melon, both of which are green — like tree leaves.
Wrapping sausage in refrigerated crescent rolls is another way to create a meat-based Halloween breakfast entree. You could also use homemade or store-bought pizza dough. Roll out the dough, and cut it into strips. Mummify each sausage by wrapping a strip of dough around it. Cook for 12 minutes or longer, according to the dough directions. Let the mummies cool down, and dab two eyes on each with ketchup. Cover a serving plate with gauze and a piece of wax paper.
Serve husbands and older kids a gory-looking plate of scrambled eggs with salsa. The combination is delicious, although it may not look too appetizing. Add sliced black olives for eyes, if your family likes the taste of olives. Press Halloween cookie cutters into toast to serve with the eggs.
Muffins, Pancakes and Waffles
Beguile your family with easy pumpkin muffins, made with spice cake mix and 15 oz. of canned solid pack pumpkin. Shred a carrot or two with a vegetable peeler to add texture and a healthy dose of Vitamin A to the baked breakfast goods. Toss in walnuts or flaxseed for even healthier muffins. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Drizzle with a mix of confectioner’s sugar, orange zest and water, or eat au natural. These can be made the night before.
Pop a couple of waffles in the toaster to make spider web waffles. Press two chocolate chips, point side down, into a marshmallow to make the spider’s eyes. Stick eight pretzel stick halves, because you know savvy kids will be counting, into the marshmallow. Drizzle a spider web shape onto the waffle with maple or chocolate syrup and plop the spider in the middle.
Rename pancakes “booberry” pancakes when you mix in a half cup of fresh or defrosted blueberries to a quick pancake box mix. For a healthier pancake, keep buckwheat pancake mix on hand. The buckwheat pancake mix is heavy on its own, but you can substitute a quarter cup of dry pancake mix for the buckwheat and send kids on their way to a day of Halloween fun knowing they’ve had at least something nutritious today.
