Party Table and House Decoration Idea: Halloween Party

This was my 1st time throwing a Halloween party ever. We just moved here and we were trying to make new friends. So I invited people with little kids on my FB friend list. Mind you, those people are/were strangers to me hahaha Hey, a girl gotta do what a girl gotta do right? I mean….moving from Montreal, to Europe, then to FSJ, wow, hard to find new friends, I feel sorry for my baby. He needs to have social life too with people his age, right?

Anyhoo.

I prepared cookies, cakes, dessert cups, and even goodie bags.

Dessert Table

On the dessert table, you can see there are:

Jack Scallington cake pops

Fairy caramel apples

The Salvatore Brothers’ apples

Pudding

Pumpkin Patch cupcakes

Spider cupcakes

Rotten Jack o Lantern cake

Various Halloween themed sugar cookies

Drinks

Cupcakes

Basically for the cupcakes, I use this following recipe for sugar cookie cupcakes. Why they are called sugar cookie cupcakes? Because of the slightly crisp top 🙂 I swirled some blueberry jam during for a little surprise when the kids bite the cupcakes 🙂

Of course you can use cupcakes of your choice and buttercream of your choice. I used SMBC for the buttercream.

For the pumpkin patch, you will need orange colored and green fondant

What you have to do is pipe/spoon a dollop of buttercream on cupcake. With round cookie cutter, cut orange fondant, place on buttercream, shaping it a little like a dome. With knife make lines like pumpkin has. Then shape green fondant into stems.

For the spider cupcakes, I used browniesh colored fondant which I also cut with round cookie cutter. Spiders were made of modelling chocolate.

Cupcakes:

1 c sugar

1/2 c butter

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 c flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 c milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin pan with paper liners.

Cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.

Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan. Drop a tsp jam and swirl a little. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Cool on rack before decorating!

Halloween Themed Sugar Cookies

Cookies:

2 c flour

1/4 tsp BSoda

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 c butter, room temperature

2/3 c sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla essence/extract

Preheat oven 350 F

Combine flour, soda and salt, set aside

Beat butter and sugar and gradually add in sugar, until fluffy, on high speed for 4 minutes. Add in egg and 1 tsp of the vanilla essence. Reduce to low and add in flour gradually, until combined. Form into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill it for half hour

On floured surface, roll out dough and cut using Halloween themed cookie cutters and place on ungreased cookie sheet Bake for 9-11 mins, cool for 5 mins on pan then remove from pans onto cooling rack.

Royal Icing (you can use this one if not Alton Brown’s royal icing – I love Alton Brown’s but for the cookies on this instructables, I use this following recipe)

1 bag of icing sugar (16 oz)

3 tbsp meringue powder

7 tbsp warm water food colors

At low speed, beat icing sugar, meringue powder and water until glossy. Beat in remaining vanilla essence Divide among bowls and tin as desired and start decorating your cookies!

NOTE: you can always add warm water 1 tbsp at a time to make the royal icing more runny if you think it’s too thick.

Caramel Apples

6 apples

Caramel candies – store bought, 1 bag 2 tbsp milk (or half and half is fine as well)

Popsicle sticks

Fairy sprinkles (or of your choice, Halloween themed etc)

Place unwrapped candies in a microwave proof bowl and add in milk. Heat on high for 2 mins, stirring once, let cool briefly. While cooling, press sticks into top of apples Dip/roll apples into melted caramel, coating and turning as needed. Place on parchment/wax paper to set

Cake Pops and Pudding

Cake Pops:

They are made using any flavor cakes and cream of your choice. Crumble cake, mix with cream, shape to round balls and dip them in melted chocolate. For making Jack, I had leftover royal icing from making cookies. I tinted it black and pipe Jack’s authentic face/eyes and grins

Pudding:

Since it is for Halloween, I tinted them dark with dark green, purple, black, dark blue food coloring. You have to add the food color while making the jelly. I used agar-agar powder for the jelly (available at Asian stores or online), but brand such as Amira or Jello can be used as well

Rotten Jack O Lantern Cake

The pumpkin cake was spiced cake with cream cheese buttercream, made using Wilton ball pan (available in Walmart for only $16 at the time I purchased it) and the bottom cake was using regular round pan, chocolate flavor with vanilla buttercream. Obviously you can use any cake flavors and cream you wish!

The cake is covered in fondant and decorated with modelling chocolate. Pretty simple. For the leaves I used cookie cutter that you can purchase on ebay while for the mouse, you can google for inspiration or even your kids toys 😉

Gift Station – Spooky Tree

Yes you can purchase goodie bags but since I wanted to put in pencils, they are pretty long, so I used brown lunch bags which I decorated with printed pictures from internet and glued to the bags, they are Halloween related such as witches, ghost, cemetery, etc

You can add in anything you like to your goodie bags. I usually fill them up with notepads, erasers, pencils, then store bought sweets and homemade cookies packed individually. Yes i know these days parents throw away homemade things they find in their kids Halloween stash (which is sad as store bought contains tons stuffs we dont know most of the times!), but I only give away goodie bags to my friends kids, and the sweets usually what they can have at the party anyways 🙂

Then I paper punch the top of the bag, roll it down and tie with ribbons. Then these goodie bags are hung on to the branches on the gift station.

This gift station of spooky tree, is not just handy for the goodie bags, but also great for house decoration 🙂

Table Decoration PLUS Lollipop Station

I also made a lollipop station where the kids can grab one each on the way out as a thank you for coming to the party. It is a spoiling day to the kids when it’s Halloween in my house.

This lollipop station is in the form of candy bouquet. Pretty simple to make. All you need is:

A plastic pot

Flower foam/styrofoam

Gauze

Black ribbon

Orange ribbon

Glue/hot glue/double side sticky tape

Streamer, orange and black

Lollipops

Halloween themed cupcake picks

Skewers

Hard paper, black

See through plastic, orange

White paper

Scissor

Cut foam as big as the center of the pot. Decorate the pot wrapped in gauze and black ribbon. Secure gauze with either hot glue or double side sticky tape, set aside

Secure lollies on skewers with sticky tape. On the lollies, attach Halloween themed cupcake picks and secure with sticky tape. Cover the skewers with black/orange streamers. Secure the streamer with sticky tape/glue. Decorate with small orange ribbons. You got your monsters lollies. Insert them into the foam.

Bats lollies: On black paper, draw and cut bat wings. On white paper, draw and cut round shapes for eyes. Wrap lollies with black streamer then secure on skewers. Cover the skewers with black/orange streamers. Glue wings on lollies and glue eyes. Decorate with with small ribbons. You got your bat lollies. Insert them into the foam

Jack O Lantern: On black paper, draw and cut eyes and grins. Wrap lollies in orange see through plastic. Secure them to skewers. Cover skewers with orange or black streamers. Glue eyes and grins, and you got your jack o lantern lollies. insert them into the foam.

For the lollies station, I made gingerbread house only as decoration. You can consume them though as they are edible. 

Lanterns

Through out the house, inside and outside. We placed milk jug lanterns which we painted with Halloween themes. Pretty fun to make with my lil son 🙂

And what is Halloween without scary pumpkin lantern, right? So we also carved and decorated the porch with them.

Happy Halloween~~~