Halloween 2025: party ideas and cocktail recipes

A Bloody Old Fashioned

You’ll need:

• 60ml whisky (for a classic pour, go with a bourbon like Bulleit)

• 10ml blood orange syrup

• Two dashes of Angostura bitters

• Orange peel for garnish.

To make:

• Fill a rocks glass with ice

• Add your chosen whisky, blood orange syrup, and Angostura bitters to the chilled glass

• Stir the ingredients gently to combine

• Squeeze the orange peel over the drink and then drop the peel in.

A Bloody Martini

You’ll need:

• 15ml extra dry vermouth

• 75ml gin (we recommend Gordon’s London Dry)

• 60ml pomegranate juice drink

To make:

• Add ice to a cocktail shaker

• Measure and pour in your vermouth, gin and pomegranate juice

• Stir gently and strain into a Martini glass.

Spiced Patch Margarita

You’ll need:

• 50ml Tequila

• 80ml Apple Cider

• 15ml Orange Liquor

• 1.5 tsb Pumpkin butter

• Sugar for rim (optional)

• Ginger beer to top

• Pinch of cayenne pepper and cinnamon

• Pomegranate juice for dipping

To make:

• Dip the rim of your glass into a thin layer of pomegranate juice then dip it into the sugar mix

• Add all ingredients to an ice-filled shaker and shake

• Pour into your glass and top with ginger beer

Spiced Pumpkin Soda

You’ll need:

• 50ml Seedlip Spice 94

• 30ml Ginger and Pumpkin shrub*

• Soda to top

*To make the shrub:

Add 150g of peeled ginger, 400g peeled pumpkin, two cups of cider vinegar and two cups of caster sugar to a mason jar and give it a thorough muddling. Leave for 24 hours in a fridge and fine strain the finished shrub into a bottle or jug.

To make:

• Fill a highball glass with ice

• Add your Seedlip Spice 94 and then pour in 30ml of the shrub

• Top with soda and garnish with an optional lemon twist.

If your cooking ends up looking like something from a horror film even when it’s not Halloween, you won’t want to try anything too difficult for your Halloween party. So these easy recipes involve some creative twists on party food and things you can buy ready to eat.

Witches broomsticks

This is a three-ingredient hack for a crowd-pleasing snack. To make, simply buy some breadsticks, string cheese and chives. Push the string cheese onto the end of a breadstick and separate to look like the bottom end of a broom. Tie a chive around the base of the broom. And that’s it – talk about magic! Serve up on a platter and add a bunch of dips and you have yourself an easy, but still impressive, spread.

Severed fingers

How do you trick your guests into thinking they aren’t just eating cocktail sausages or mini hotdogs? Use a knife to peel out a small square at the top to give it the appearance of a finger. And then pour a bunch of sauce (ketchup or hot sauce) on the plate so they look like chopped up fingers.

Crispy brains

Sweet bites that look like brains? Talk about using your head. While some prep is required, these can be whipped up with relatively little effort.

You’ll need:

• A bag of mini marshmallows

• 25g of butter

• 100g of cereal (Rice Krispies or something similar)

• Sunflower oil

• Red icing or piping

To make:

• Line a baking tray with nonstick baking paper

• Add marshmallows and butter to a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Leave to melt.

• Pour the cereal over the melted marshmallows and stir until well mixed.

• With some sunflower oil on your hands, start shaping the mixture into something resembling brains

• Using the red icing, drizzle or pipe squiggly lines all over the brains

• Leave to set until firm.