5 ways you can still celebrate Halloween at home

From hosting the ultimate scary movie marathon to making your most-impressive Halloween cake to date, use this year’s pared back options to your full advantage – we’ve got plenty of foodie ideas to keep you occupied.

1  Plan a movie night

Whether you’re all about the guts and the gore or are more of a face-behind-the-cushion type of viewer, Halloween is the best time to host a movie marathon. Before you snuggle in for the night, make sure you bring your A-game when it comes to snacks: make up a batch of our salted brown-butter and maple popcorn for a more-ish treat or tuck into our skillet-pan brownie with white chocolate Lindors, which definitely requires multiple spoons.

For savoury scoffing, turn to one of our many fabulous pizza recipes, or serve up a bowl of nachos and watch them instantly disappear.

2 Create an autumnal Halloween feast

Halloween couldn’t fall at a better time of the year (no pun intended); as there are so many seasonal ingredients to get excited about in the kitchen.

If you’re lucky enough to be able to host guests, then we’ve got a number of seasonal party menus which will certainly get you in the mood for autumn.

Check out our Halloween-themed dinner menu; featuring cheesy biscuit skulls served with a bloody homemade tomato sauce, a vibrant chicken and sage traybake and then a fiendishly-good sticky toffee pudding topped with homemade toffee apples.

3 Bake up Halloween treats

Take your Halloween baking to the next level with our terrifyingly impressive ghost-topped masterpiece.

Or why not try our blood splatter cake? Red velvet sponge and cream cheese frosting are topped with jagged shards of ‘glass’ and a splattering of ‘blood’. It’s not for the faint-hearted.

We’ve got incredible ghost and bat cookies too, which are great fun to create with the kids, and when it comes to decoration, you can let their little imaginations run wild. Check out all of our Halloween baking recipes here.

4 Trick-or-treat (virtually)

It’s so lovely to see the excitement on kids’ faces as they unveil their annual Halloween costume for trick-or-treating. Although it’s not advised to travel around other people’s homes this year, we’d definitely advocate for a bit of virtual trick-or-treating on a video call.

Another idea is to take your little ones on a careful walk around your neighbourhood – can they win a sweet for every pumpkin or ghost they see? Try earlier in the day or even the day after, to avoid too many other people.

Or, if you’re able to, why not do a socially-distanced doorstep drop-off to neighbours or friends, delivering freshly made treats. A box of our spiderweb cupcakes will always be a welcomed delivery.

5 Make the most of the humble pumpkin

It’s a frightening fact, but did you know that over half of the 24 million pumpkins us Brits buy each year actually go to waste? That’s right – only one in seven people realise the pumpkin and its innards can actually be eaten.

We’re hoping that one positive outcome of lockdown this year is that people will feel more inclined to use up their leftover pumpkin, rather than sending it straight to the waste bin.

Instead of wasting these wonderful winter vegetables, you can re-use them in a multitude of sweet or savoury recipes – from a roast chicken and pumpkin traybake to pumpkin and poppyseed loaf.

Discover all of the ways to use up leftover pumpkin here.

And if you’re on the lookout for Halloween party food ideas, we’ve got plenty more spooky options lined up for you.