The decorations get three weeks of planning and the food gets a grocery run on the day. Then you put a bag of fun size candy in a bowl next to a table you spent a Saturday setting up, and the table stops working.
The period food is not complicated. Most of it is sugar, apples, and corn, which is exactly what you would expect from a holiday built on the end of the harvest.
Spiced cider punch, hot or cold
This is the one thing you should make. It fills the house with the right smell before anyone arrives, which no decoration can do.
For about twenty servings: one gallon of apple cider, one cup of orange juice, four cinnamon sticks, one teaspoon of whole cloves, half a teaspoon of allspice berries, and one orange sliced into rounds. Put the cloves and allspice in a tea ball or a square of cheesecloth tied shut, or you will be picking cloves out of cups all night.
Simmer gently for twenty minutes. Do not boil it, which turns the flavor flat and slightly bitter. Pull the spice bundle, add the orange rounds, hold on low.
To serve it cold, chill the base and add two liters of ginger ale right before guests arrive. Add it earlier and you are serving flat cider.
Hot cider wants a real cup. The vintage ceramic mugs in black cat, skull and jack-o'-lantern designs hold 12 ounces and handle heat, which a paper cup does not do gracefully for a drink people sip slowly.
Molasses popcorn balls
Popcorn balls were standard Halloween food for decades, and the molasses version is the older one.
Pop about twelve cups of corn into a large buttered bowl. In a heavy saucepan combine one cup of molasses, one cup of granulated sugar, one tablespoon of butter, and one tablespoon of white vinegar. Cook over medium heat, without stirring once it has dissolved, to 270 degrees Fahrenheit on a candy thermometer.
Pour it over the popcorn in a thin stream while tossing. Let it sit two minutes, butter your hands well, and press into balls about the size of a tennis ball. Twelve cups gives you fifteen.
Wrap each one. The cello bags in the vintage range exist for exactly this job and they keep the balls from fusing into a single mass by hour three.
Candied apples, and a warning
Eight small apples, stems removed, dried thoroughly, with a wooden stick pushed into each. Wet apples are the reason this fails.
Combine two cups of sugar, three quarters of a cup of water, and half a cup of light corn syrup. Cook to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, hard crack. Add red coloring off the heat if you want the classic look. Tilt the pan and dip each apple, turn to coat, and set on a buttered sheet.
The warning: this syrup is well above boiling and it sticks to skin. Keep children out of the kitchen for the ten minutes it takes. Eat them the same day, because the coating goes sticky overnight in any humidity.
If that sounds like more risk than you want on a party day, caramel apples from a bag of wrapped caramels melted with two tablespoons of water get you most of the way there at a third of the temperature.
Things that require no cooking
- Doughnuts with the cider. Period correct, universally liked, and somebody else makes them.
- Spiced nuts, warmed with butter, salt, cinnamon and a little cayenne
- Deviled eggs, which were party food then and still are
- Cheese cubes and cold cuts on picks, fifty picks to a package in vintage designs
- Molasses taffy, if you want the pulling part to be the entertainment
One opinion: skip dry ice in the punch bowl. It fogs for about four minutes, it is a genuine hazard if a chunk ends up in a cup, and the smoke never photographs the way you are picturing. Candlelight near the bowl does more for the same effort.
What to serve it on
Nine inch plates, not seven. People put popcorn balls and apples and three other things on one plate, and a dessert round cannot carry it. The vintage theme plates come half black cat and half goblin at 9 inches, and the Black Scratch Cat luncheon napkins are two ply, which matters once candied apple syrup is involved.
The 12.875 inch witch and black cat platters are the right size for a tray of popcorn balls, and they hold enough that you are not refilling every fifteen minutes. All of it sits in the vintage Halloween collection.
For a dessert table that reads fall rather than Halloween, plain orange, ivory and gold from the solid color tableware range gives you the warm palette without printing competing with the food. And the wider Halloween range covers serving pieces and tablecovers for a bigger spread.
Shopping the food table this week? Drop PARTY10 in at checkout for 10% off. It works once per customer, so use it on the full order rather than a quick top up.
