Halloween
254 recipes found
Pumpkin Pie Milkshake
As any true pumpkin lover can attest, there’s more than one way to get your pie fix, and a milkshake just might be the most winning substitution: It’s creamy and has the same whipped-cream topper. Add the spices you most like in your pie — go heavier on the ginger if that’s your thing, or load up on cinnamon — and adjust the sweetness to your crowd’s tastes. Even if you don’t drink whisky, there’s a time and a place for bourbon, and this is it. Add a splash or two for the adults; they’ll thank you.
Pumpkin Bundt Cake With Maple Brown-Butter Glaze
Bundt cakes are classic showstoppers — big, lofty and usually dressed in elegant drizzles and drips of glaze. Here, a dense, moist cake full of warm fall spices and pumpkin purée is encased in a layer of rich, nutty brown-butter maple glaze. Feel free to make it a day before you plan to serve it: This cake keeps well at room temperature, and you might think it's even better on the second day. Just make sure to keep it covered and resist the urge to shave off a slice every time you walk by. If you can find it, use organic confectioners' sugar for the glaze. It's made from raw sugar and uses tapioca rather than cornstarch as its anticaking agent. It will give the glaze a richer taste and smoother texture than conventional confectioners’ sugar — a tip picked up from Stella Parks.
Sticky Cranberry Gingerbread
Sticky, spicy and full of cranberries, this gingerbread is perfect for the holidays. The recipe has been designed to make ahead, and will taste as good 2 days after baking as it does on the same day. (It will keep for 4 to 5 days.) To store it, wrap it well, stick it in the fridge and then bring to room temperature before serving. Whipped cream or crème fraîche, spiked with a little bourbon if you like, is nice on the side.
Apple Cider Whoopie Pies
Their name may be fun to say, but whoopie pies aren’t really pies at all but rather soft, cakelike cookie sandwiches. These are inspired by a classic apple cider doughnut and, true to form, are dusted with cinnamon sugar. Apple cider that's been reduced and a bit of apple butter work in tandem to subtly flavor the fluffy cakes, and good old cream cheese frosting makes the ideal filling. For beautiful, uniformly sized cakes, use a 2-tablespoon cookie scoop to portion the batter for baking. If you don't have one, they might bake up a little wonky, but they’ll still taste delightful.
Roasted Pear Quick Bread
Roasted pears add juiciness and depth of flavor to this otherwise simple quick bread. You can peel the pears if you want, but they add a sturdiness to the roasted fruit and a nice texture to the finished loaf. The addition of streusel takes this bread over the top, but it is excellent without it, too, if you feel like skipping a step.
Old-Fashioned Doughnut Bundt Cake
This simple vanilla Bundt cake has plenty of freshly grated nutmeg to nod to the flavor of old-fashioned doughnuts. But since it’s baked rather than fried, it also gets a generous coating of melted butter while it’s still warm to give it some of that doughnut richness. Then it’s coated in cinnamon-sugar. It’s neither a doughnut nor a cake – it’s both. It’s delicious right after it’s made, but it tastes even more like an old-fashioned doughnut after sitting overnight. Store it tightly wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 4 days.
Pumpkin Layer Cake With Caramel Buttercream
Warmly spiced pumpkin cake and toasty caramel are a natural pair in this fall showstopper. The cake is light and fluffy with just enough spice to highlight the pumpkin flavor, while a generous pour of caramel sauce between the layers adds richness. (Store-bought caramel sauce will also work, but expect a slightly sweeter result.) For an impressive presentation, top the frosted cake with a bit more caramel sauce, and let it trail down the sides. It’s just the thing for a fall birthday treat or the Thanksgiving table.
Apple Skillet Cake With Salted Caramel Frosting
This buttery cake is filled with soft, caramel-infused apples and topped with an easy caramel frosting. It’s better to err on the side of underbaking the cake slightly, since it makes for a gooier end result.
Triple Ginger Skillet Cake
This cake, at its best when warm, is full of dark molasses flavor and three kinds of ginger (fresh, ground and crystallized). It can be served with powdered sugar, whipped cream or even ice cream — a drizzle of caramel sauce is especially nice, too.
Apple Butter Sticky Buns With Pecans and Currants
These sticky buns are so pillowy and sweet you may want to fall right into them and take a nap. Caramel-drenched currants and pecans blanket the top. Apple butter gives them a pleasant tang, and maple syrup nudges them toward fall. To bake these in the morning with a bit less hassle, make this recipe through Step 5 the night before, cover the buns with plastic wrap and refrigerate. About 2 hours before you plan to eat, remove them from the fridge. Let them stand in a warm place until doubled, then bake as directed.
Skillet Brownie With Chocolate Ganache Frosting
This skillet brownie has it all: It’s chewy at the edges, and gooey in the center. (For maximum gooeyness, err on the side of underbaking slightly.) Topped with more chocolate and a sprinkling of flaky sea salt, this easy recipe is a chocolate lover’s dream.
Apple Cider
To understand the difference between apple cider and juice, think of it like this: Unfiltered cider is a complex dark brown multigrain, whereas filtered apple juice is a plain sweet white bread. There’s a place for both, but to fully savor the fruit, make raw, fresh cider. Benford Lepley, the co-founder of Floral Terranes, a small-batch cidery and winery on Long Island, suggests using a mix of apples, ideally fresh ones grown in your general area, but Pink Lady is a supermarket favorite. Adjust the variety based on your preference of sweet to tart, then crush and press. (This recipe calls for a blender or food processor and a cloth-lined colander.) Drink and repeat all season long.
Maple Pecan Caramel Corn
Made from a combination of maple syrup and brown sugar, the rich, buttery caramel on this popcorn has a brittle, candy-like crunch that’s heightened by plenty of toasted pecans added alongside. (Cracker Jack fans can substitute roasted, salted peanuts.) A small amount of baking soda keeps the caramel from becoming sticky, but note that you’ll need an instant-read thermometer to yield the best result. If you’d rather use an air popper to prepare your popcorn, you can — just skip Step 2. The caramel corn will keep in an airtight container for at least a week.
Roast Pumpkin, Radicchio And Feta Salad
The sweetness of the oven-blasted pumpkin, together with the salty intensity of the feta, the bitterness of the radicchio and the sour, subtle heat of the red onion, is a model of harmonious simplicity.
New York Maple-Walnut Cheesecake
Why doesn't maple syrup find its way to American cheese platters the way chestnut honey does to Italian ones? We think it works particularly well with subtle, creamy cheeses, a conviction that inspired our riff on a classic New York cheesecake.
Maple-Walnut Blondies
An autumnal riff on classic blondies, these are a treat for the true maple fanatic. Adding maple syrup to the batter and toasting the walnuts in maple syrup gives the blondies double the maple flavor, while a splash of bourbon in the batter mellows the sweetness. Make sure to underbake these slightly: The key to moist, chewy blondies is to take them out just before they’re fully baked. Refrigerate the blondies for optimal chewiness; they're especially good straight from the fridge.
Pumpkin Fudge Torte
With a texture that falls somewhere between pudding and ganache, this bittersweet torte is silky smooth and very rich. The whipped cream topping, run through with spiced pumpkin purée, is a fluffy contrast to the torte’s denseness. You can make the torte two days ahead. Store it, well wrapped, in the refrigerator, then let it come to room temperature before serving.
Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Bars
Like turtle bars with a twist, these squares are gooey, crunchy and salty in all the right places. If you can, use chopped bar chocolate as called for in the recipe. If you use chocolate chips, they will seize, and the chocolate layer will look uneven and a little chalky. That said, beauty is only skin deep, and these bars taste great either way, so if chips are all you can find, bake away.
Mexican Hot Dogs
If you’ve ever walked through the streets of Los Angeles late at night, you may have been lucky enough to happen upon a street vendor selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs piled high with caramelized onions, sautéed peppers, pico de gallo, avocado, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. This version of Mexican hot dogs, also known as street dogs or Los Angeles hot dogs, is believed to be a riff on a similar recipe that originated in Sonora, Mexico. In Los Angeles, they’re sometimes fried on a mobile D.I.Y. griddle made with a wheeled cart, a large sheet pan and a heat source underneath, but we don’t recommend trying that at home. For this recipe, a standard sheet pan and an oven will do.
Puréed Winter Squash and Red Lentil Soup
Here the tawny hue of the cooked lentils blends well with the sweet yellow-orange winter squash. If you’re looking for Halloween colors for a dinner main dish or starter, look no further.
Chocolate Trail Mix
Anyone who has experienced the accidental melting of chocolate trail mix during hot weather has also likely enjoyed the blissful moment when it solidifies again, leaving it in a different form: one composed of sweet, salty and crunchy clusters, with an eggshell-thin chocolate coating. This simple and adaptable recipe — which includes a tip for achieving the melted version — is one that you can enjoy during long hikes, after hard workouts or simply to snack on with beer or cocktails. While trail mix is often raw, this version lightly toasts the nuts and seeds, which imparts extra flavor. Finishing with flaky sea salt is a nice touch, too.
Peanut-Butter Fudge
Traditionally, fudge is made by boiling sugar and flavorings to a specific temperature, then cooling it, and finally beating it for just the right amount of time. It’s not hard to do, but if the conditions are not just right, the texture of the finished fudge can be too soft, too hard or even unpleasantly grainy. This peanut butter fudge may not be traditional, but it’s much simpler to make properly and results in the creamiest confection imaginable. For a delicious textural contrast, don’t skip the toppings!
Giant Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookie
This shortbread is like a huge, sliceable Girl Scout cookie. (You’re welcome!) An easy shortbread is topped with a layer of peanut butter frosting, blanketed with a thick chocolate glaze, then chilled until set. Brown sugar helps keep the shortbread soft, and coconut oil does the same for the chocolate coating, so the whole thing is easy to cut with a knife and eat with a fork. Be sure to use bar chocolate, not chips — which don’t melt as evenly — so your chocolate glaze ends up shiny and smooth.
Brandied Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin pie made with canned pumpkin is all well and good, but pumpkin pie made with fresh butternut squash purée is even better. Thin-skinned and easy to cut, butternut squash turns soft and velvety if you roast it, and a quick whirl in the food processor or a blender quickly reduces to it to a luscious purée. Here we’ve kept the seasonings on the light side to best showcase the character of the squash. But feel free to amp up the cinnamon and ginger if you like a spicier slice. The brandy is optional, and if you’d rather not use it, you can leave it out or substitute another spirit; bourbon is excellent. (Don't let making your own pie crust intimidate you: our pie guide has everything you need to know.)