Your Guests Will Celebrate This Fantastic Halloween Dinner Party Menu!

I knew I wanted to host an elegant Halloween dinner party. This was not going to be hot dogs cut to look like fingers or stuffed orange peppers cut like jack o’ lanterns. An elegant Halloween dinner party menu for me meant a seated meal including a salad, an entree, vegetable and so on.

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Appetizer:

I did have one idea for a creepy appetizer. I found these great skeleton hands and placed them on clear salad plates. Chilled shrimp were placed on the hands and the cocktail sauce was dribbled out on the clear plate as if it was blood splatters. What do you think, creepy, but with a little class?

Salad:

The second course was my family’s favorite Caesar salad. Plenty of garlic would make sure to keep any vampires away! You can find the recipe for it at The Best Homemade Caesar Salad Dressing!

Tomatoes:

My friend Mary from Life at Bella Terra wrote about the party and dubbed these, “spooky stuffed tomatoes.” Although I served dinner family style at our Halloween dinner party, these are perfect for plated dinners because they add color to the dish. The recipe for these is found at Easy Stuffed Baked Tomatoes. Another reason these are a great dinner party dish is because they can be prepped hours ahead of time and only need to popped into the oven for 20 minutes before serving.

Entree – Beef Tenderloin:

The entree was wonderful beef tenderloin. There are thousands of recipes out there for how to prepare a beef tenderloin, here are a couple of different ones from Better Homes and Gardens. I go for the quick method and my tenderloin is ready in about 35 minutes. I don’t sear mine ahead of time, which is a personal choice. It is important to have a meat thermometer! This is my favorite one! I cooked this one over shallots, but I love to cook it with cipollini onions if you can get them, too! Make sure you order your tenderloin from your butcher or meat counter. Order it trimmed and tied!

Potato:

Now, if I had a fail, I would say it was these potatoes. It wasn’t the way they tasted! Trust me, they were delicious! But I think my potato ghosts with their caper eyes look a little more like Jabba the Hutt! Well, actually it is more like Jabba the Hutt conjoined twins. It’s okay, everyone enjoyed them!

Spider Rolls:

Using Rhodes brand frozen dinner rolls, I formed these spider dinner rolls. Each one turned out with their own little bit of personality, but each one tasted delicious!

You can read all about how I set my table for this Halloween dinner party at How to set a Wicked, Elegant, Halloween Tablescape.

Creepy Candle Cakes:

I spotted these cakes on Joann’s website when placing an online order and although I am not a great cake decorator, I knew I wanted to try and make these. They turned out pretty good.

In light of everything else I had going on, I actually used a box mix and canned frosting to make and decorate these red velvet cakes. They were moist and delicious, a perfect dessert to finish off this dinner.

If you would like some ideas for decorating a space for your own elegant Halloween party, you can read about how I decorated here.