Seven splendily festive vintage Halloween recipes

Well, hello there, my dears, I almost didn't see you over the mountain of pumpkin spice everything and festive treats that I've been whipping up this month! :D

I jest, of course, but only slightly. Between the stellar array of autumn produce that is grown locally in the Okanagan (the succulent, sweet pears alone are enough to make you weep with joy!), Canadian Thanksgiving on the second Monday of the month, numerous family birthdays (including both my little sister's and my maternal grandma's), our wedding anniversary on the 14th, and Halloween, there's usually more fabulous food on hand at our house in October than during December - or at least an equal quantity to that month's!

As much as I adore and love cooking + baking for all of those deeply special days, as you might guess (if you're familiar with my unending passion for October 31st), there's no day of the whole year that I enjoy creating festive food for more than Halloween and with it looming every nearer (just five more days to go - *excited squeal!!!*), I thought it was high time I shared a few new (to this blog, I mean) vintage Halloween posts that I've rounded up over the past year.

Vintage Halloween/strongly autumnal recipes (save for Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie related ones) aren't the easiest thing to come by in general, especially online. The volume that has been kindly shared by folks who upload vintage recipes from cookbooks, cookery booklets, magazines and other sources isn't exactly bursting at the seems, so when I do encounter one in my online travels at any point in the year, I always tuck it away instantly to save for when the tail end of October rolls around again next (you can find all past vintage Halloween recipes that I've shared so far anytime on my Vintage Recipes page).

This year I've been able to find seven marvelously fun Halloween themed or appropriate recipes, each of which can be modified if need, to accommodate a wide range of dietary needs. I hope that you really enjoy any of these that you try out and that you enjoy seeing all of them as much as I loved sourcing them.




Once again Crisco is at the heart of another delicious vintage recipe - this time a festively fun Halloween themed mincemeat cakes recipe from 1936. If shortening isn't your thing, as I always like to mention when it makes an appearance here, by all means feel free to swap it out for butter, margarine, or your favourite suitable cooking fat.

This page contains various other recipes, too, which are not explicitly Halloween-y, but sound like they'd make for good, stick-to-your ribs comfort food for fall and winter all the same. The pumpkin face topped cakes (which are pretty much like a basic cupcake with mincemeat included in the batter) are just adorable and I especially loved that this page dated to the 1930s, as I've not found many Halloween recipes from that decade online over the years.




No photo or date accompanies this recipe mid-century recipes for Halloween Gelatin Salad, but based on the fonts and ingredients used here, as well as the present of an apostrophe in the word "Halloween", I would place it as being from the 1930s or 40s, though it could be a touch newer than that. I've always adored Jell-O salads that included carrots and think that this would be a fun, appealing choice for Halloween, especially if you gave it a spooky festive name like "Hair and Brains Salad”, in reference to the shredded carrots and walnuts.



From the easy to replicate spider web design on the icing that tops it to the very name - Devil's Food Cake - itself, this festive and seriously delicious looking cake is an ideal choice for Halloween. Be it folks aged five to ninety-five, I've rarely encountered anyone who didn't love a slice of luxurious Devil's Food Cake, so it really is an awesome choice for a Halloween get-together (you can easily make it in cupcake form, too, if that serves your needs better - and if you're sending a youngster off to class with a dessert for a school Halloween party, it's certainly a handier and more portable way to serve Devil's Food Cake).




Though the ingredient combination at work in these adorable 1950s Halloween Sandwiches might raise a few 21st century eyebrows, don't let that deter you. Simply copy the concept and instead fill these festive little sandwiches with whatever your heart desires.

Singularly, or any combination of, Nutella, peanut butter or other nut butters, dulce de leche, orange coloured varieties of jam or marmalade, lemon curd, Biscoff spread, and apple butter all make seasonally appropriate sandwich filling sweet choices, if you want to take things in such a direction.




How fabulously cute is this Halloween themed Honey Chocolate Cake from 1942? I just love its colour palette and fun decorative touches, plus I'm sure that the use of honey here gives it a really lovely depth of flavour that suits autumn time especially well - plus, you can never go wrong with marshmallow (aka, seven minute) frosting (if you can't, or opt not to, eat eggs, be sure to check out this St. Patrick's Day recipe post of mine with a great alternative option there for seven minute frosting).




Fall and caramel truly go hand-in-hand, so this sweet tasting, elegantly pretty Burnt Sugar Cake (which is, at its heart, a caramel cake) is an ideal choice for all kinds of Halloween and autumn celebrations in general. I'd be tempted to serve pieces of it with warm cooked spiced apples or pears ladled on top for even more of a seasonal kick.




A bevy of scrumptious sounding recipes for different holidays greet you on festive recipe booklet page, but it is the darling little chocolate Halloween Cat Faces with their charming candy corn eyes that we're most after this month (though any of the others would work splendidly for All Hallows' Eve, too!).


{To learn more about a specific recipe and for larger image sizes, please click on an image or the link in the paragraph below it to be taken to its respective page.}

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Even if you usually eat very healthily and/or don't have a huge sweet tooth (two things that apply to me), come Halloween, you simply must indulge, if you celebrate this day. Any or all of the recipes above are terrific way to do just that! T

he caramel cake in particular is calling my name, especially since I know that a gluten-free version will not be hard to whip up, so I might just give that a in the coming week. Which of these seven frighteningly fantastic vintage Halloween recipes appeal to you most of all?

I hope that you're all having a fun filled, terrific week and that you're as excited as I am about Halloween's return! This is such an enjoyable, spirited time of the year and the last great hurrah, in Canada at least, before winter really and truly settles in for another several months - a point that is worth celebrating unto itself!

So go ahead and give yourself permissions to indulge this week - be it with a vintage recipe like the ones here or anything else that your heart desires. Halloween comes but once a year and deserves to be savoured with your favourites candies, treats, and vintage recipes alike!