Boozy Halloween Mixed Drink Recipes for your Trick-or-Treat After-Party
Halloween is all about dressing up, eating a metric ton of sugar and crashing hard. At least, that’s what it’s about for the kids. But after the sugar crash, you can have some big kid fun with these boozy treats this Halloween. Whether you’re single or kidless for the evening, you can feature spooky and interesting cocktails at your Halloween get-together. Go for something simple like renaming a traditional mixed drink or cocktail, or go all-out with darklight-reactive drinks.
Rename your favorites
- Instead of simply Kool-Aid and Everclear, call your red bucket of boozy punch Lizzie Bordenade and decorate the bowl with a bloody axe.
- A bloody Mary is already pretty gory, but popping some vampire fangs on the glass and calling it a Bloodsucker Mary is in the spirit.
- Any clear mix can be named a Spinal Tap, while green drinks like margaritas and kamikazes can dress up as toxic slime for the night.
Instead of renaming your drinks or going for special mixes, you can also add special touches to every drink at the party, like spooky ice cubes.
Spooky add-ins
- Place plastic spiders or eyeballs in ice cube trays and fill with water (or vodka if you’re making it for a particular drink) to create spider or eyeball cubes for your guests.
- Serve your shots in test tubes, perhaps in a room filled with dry ice and other decorative lab equipment to enhance the spooky factor.
- Place red shots in plastic syringes (the kind for liquid medicines) for an injected blood feel. Try it with candy vodka and call it Vampire Vodka for an extra treat.
- Freeze green grapes and use them instead of ice cubes for slimy cubes.
- Make an eyeball highball by creating eyeballs from fruit for your martinis.
- Let a red syrup, like melted candy or thick sugar syrup, harden in drips on your glass rims for a dipped in blood look.
If you want to kick your party up that extra notch, craft your own Halloween cocktails. They range from cute to scary and all the way to revolting.
Halloween cocktails
- Screwdrivers with black vodka and googly eyes: This one’s firmly in the goofy and cute category, but just drinking the black vodka can be a bit disturbing.
- Devil’s blood: Much like the screwdriver, this cranberry and vodka drink is pretty normal, until you use the black vodka, which makes it spooky. Calling it devil’s blood ups the creep factor, too.
- Horny devils: The drink is a simple black vodka bloody Mary, but adding in the chili pepper horns and calling it a horny devil makes it hilarious.
- Brain hemorrhage: Don’t think about why the “brain” curdles at the top. Just drink it.
- Bleeding heart: Ick. The secret? Pickled baby beets. But you can let your guests wonder if they’re tiny little pig hearts, if you like.
- Black devil martini: A simple mix, but oh so fancy in those bold Halloween colors.
OK, so maybe you managed to be kid-free, but there’s still a designated driver or two invited to the party, right? So whip them up something fun to drink, too. Call them virgin sacrifice cocktails instead of just virgin drinks.
And don’t forget the snacks (or you can call them crudites if you’re having a fancy party), these are espcially important for the non-drinkers in the crowd. Otherwise, they may get bored watching everyone else drink too much.
Virgin sacrifice cocktails
- Orange juice spritzer: Mix orange juice and soda and add a bit of grenadine or cherry syrup for extra color. Add black sugar to the rim to enhance the cocktail feel.
- Wide-eyed fruit smoothies: They don’t quite fit the traditional cocktail mold, but they sure are cute and tasty.
- Make any of your spooky cocktails with soda instead of liquor. A bleeding heart made with lemon-lime soda and cranberry juice will be perfect.
- Pumpkin kegs: Fill one with apple cider and, for those who want to drink a little, but aren’t cocktail fans, fill another with beer.
- Pumpkin cooler: If you can’t go to the trouble of making special virgin cocktails, place some cola and orange soda bottles in a pumpkin cooler for extra flair.
In preparation for Halloween, you may need to start testing your spooky recipes…you know, just so you know they taste right. Relax with a tumbler of devil’s blood or a brain hemorrhage tonight and get in the spirit.
Keep in touch with Kristi on Twitter @VeggieConverter and Pinterest
Image: kurisu
