Witches' fingers and banana ghosts: 5 spooky snacks you can make this Halloween

1. If using sausages, fry them in a little oil over a low heat until lightly brown all over. Leave to cool for 20-30 minutes.
2. Unfold the pastry, and cut into strips about 1cm wide.
3. Wrap strips of pastry, like bandages, around the sausages or hot dogs. Leave about 2cm unwrapped at the end of each. Brush with a little beaten egg or milk if desired – this helps make the pastry brown.
4. Bake sausages for about 20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown and the sausages are cooked through.
5. Use a toothpick to dot a little mustard for eyes. Serve with ketchup (whether you drizzle it, blood-like, over the mummies is entirely up to you).

This is more about the decoration than the ingredients. Use as many ready-made ingredients as possible to make life easier.

• 20cm round cake OR 12 cupcakes
• 1 tub chocolate frosting OR chocolate ganache
  • (mix 1/3 cup of double cream and 250g dark chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl); place over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring with a metal spoon until melted and smooth; set aside to cool, stirring occasionally, until thick and spreadable
• 1 tub vanilla frosting OR 100g white chocolate melted in the microwave

1. Spread the chocolate frosting or ganache all over the cake(s) using a palette knife.
2. Fill an icing bag with vanilla frosting or white chocolate. If you don’t have an icing bag, use a Ziploc: fill it with the frosting or chocolate, press out the air, seal it, and twist the bag to push all the sauce into one corner. When you’re ready, snip a tiny hole in that corner.
3. Draw a small circle of white sauce in the middle of the cake. Draw a bigger circle around that one, and keep going until you draw a circle around the end of the cake.
4. Take a toothpick, and starting in the middle of the cake, drag it through the icing towards the outside. Repeat at regular intervals around the cake to form the cobweb.

• Bananas
• Tangerines, mandarins, clementines or satsumas
• Celery
• Chocolate sauce or melted chocolate

1. Peel the citrus fruit. Wash the celery sticks, remove the “strings”, and cut into lengths 1cm taller than the citrus fruit. Stick the celery in the fruit to make “pumpkin stalks”. You can do these steps hours in advance.
2. Right before you’re ready to eat, peel the bananas and cut them in half. Balance them on the cut ends. Dip a toothpick in chocolate, and draw eyes and mouths near the top of the bananas to make ghost faces.
3. Serve and feel smug because your parents said Halloween is all about too much candy.

• 100g (4 oz) butter
• 50g (2 oz) caster sugar
• A few drops of vanilla extract
• 175g (6 oz) plain flour
• Green food colouring
• Almonds

Prep: 10min › Cook: 25min › Ready in: 35min

1. Preheat the oven to 150 C / Gas 2.
2. Put the butter and sugar in a large bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy.
3. Stir in the vanilla, then add the flour and mix well to form a dough.
4. Add 2 drops of food colouring, and mix well. Keep adding drops one at a time, and mixing well, until it reaches the colour you want.
5. Roll out to about 1cm thick. Cut into long, thin finger shapes. Gather the scraps together, roll out again, and repeat until all the dough is used.
6. Press an almond into the end of each “finger”, and use a knife to mark lines where the knuckles would be.
7. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

• Apples
• Peanut butter
• Mini marshmallows
• Juice of a lemon

1. Put the lemon juice in a bowl of water big enough to hold all the apples.
2. Cut apples into 6 or 8 wedges, depending on their size. Cut off and dispose of the core. Place apple pieces in lemon water as you cut them to stop them from going brown.
3. When you’re ready to serve, take two apple wedges, and spread peanut butter on one side of each. Put one wedge on a plate, and place some mini marshmallow “teeth” along the edge. Top with the other wedge. Repeat with remaining apple wedges.