Healthy Halloween Recipes: Although Halloween is typically a time for indulgence, there is no reason you have to completely forgo your health-related values when it comes to Halloween treats! This recipe guide bridges the gap between taste buds and health goals, enabling you to enjoy sweet treats while still nourishing your body.

The Secret Weapons

What makes something healthy? Well, there is a wide range of factors when it comes to health. Depending on your bio-individual needs, one person’s salvation can be another’s kryptonite. A few pillars, however, tend to promote well-being in most people. We will focus on these recipes:

Balanced Blood Sugar

Sugar and sweets aren’t innately bad; it’s more about the hyper-table sweet stuff when it doesn’t come with fat and protein. Curbing big blood sugar spikes isn’t too hard; the easiest way is to eat balanced meals. Many recipes have built-in balance by adding higher protein and fat ingredients. If your food isn’t balanced in terms of macronutrients, consider adding a high-fiber vegetable starter to your sugary foods or having some protein and fat before the higher-glycemic carbs. This will help naturally balance your blood sugar levels. Other tricks to promote balanced blood sugars include having some vinegar in water before a meal or going for a 10-15 minute walk after a meal. 

Quality Ingredients

Apart from keeping blood sugars balanced, another key aspect of healthy eating hinges on the quality of your food. Unfortunately, when it comes to Halloween, much of our trick-or-treating goods are hyper-palatable. They are, in fact, full of tricks that may taste good but contain ingredients like artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, and highly processed ingredients like vegetable oils that increase our toxic load. Swapping artificial ingredients for natural ones doesn’t have to sacrifice flavor. It can take a minute to heal your taste buds if they’ve been over-stimulated by hyper-palatable foods for years—but before long, you (and your kiddos!) can learn to enjoy foods that are not only delicious but also nutritious.

Healthy Halloween Recipes

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

These cupcakes are a perfect snack or dessert and can be made with or without chocolate chips and cream cheese frosting! Loaded with eggs, collagen, and healthy fats, these high-protein bars will keep you satiated and ensure your blood sugar stays balanced. Opt for monk fruit instead of coconut sugar to make the bars keto-friendly.

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:

• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 4 tablespoons coconut oil
• 4 eggs at room temperature
• 2 teaspoon vanilla bean powder
• 1/2 cup granulated sweetener (monk fruit or coconut sugar)
• 2 ½ cups almond flour
• 3 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• Optional: ½ cup chocolate chips

For the frosting*:

• 8 oz cream cheese (or dairy-free cream cheese), soft
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• ¼ cup coconut oil, room temp
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Pinch of cardamom (optional)

* Note: This yields a smaller quantity of frosting per cupcake. For a thicker amount, double the recipe!

Instructions

For the cupcakes:

1. Turn the oven on to 350 F
2. Add the dry ingredients (almond flour, pumpkin spice, salt, and baking soda) to a small bowl
3. Mix the wet ingredients in a large bowl (pumpkin, oil, sweetener, eggs, and vanilla)
4. Add the dry to the wet mix, and stir until combined
5. Fold in the chocolate chips
6. Pour the batter into a cupcake tin with liners up to halfway
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are golden brown

For the icing:

1. Beat all the ingredients with a handheld mixer until fluffy and smooth.

Gummy Worms

Most gummy worms are filled with artificial flavors and colors, which is a travesty considering they can be made with nourishing and delicious ingredients instead. The base of what makes these gummies is grass-fed bovine gelatin, which is an amino-acid-rich and gut-healing ingredient. Opting for natural sweeteners and flavors like whole fruit juices, your gummies go from zero to hero! Technically you can use any container to make your gummies. A glass tray or even a cookie sheet will do, but in the spirit of Halloween, using silicone molds like gummy worms or skulls (you can buy them online) adds to the fun. The orange juice makes these gummies orange. You can also split the batch and add a pinch of activated charcoal to make half the batch of gummies black!

Ingredients

• 2 cups of organic fresh pressed orange juice
• 3 tablespoons organic grass-fed gelatin
• 3 tablespoons raw honey
• Pinch of sea salt
• Optional: 1/4 tsp activated charcoal (if you want to make black gummies, too)

Instructions

1. Bloom the gelatin by adding it to the cold or room-temperature orange juice and mixing it well.
2. Once the mixture is much thicker, add it to a saucepan and warm over medium heat. Stir until the gelatin is dissolved.
3. Turn off the heat, add honey and sea salt, and mix well until dissolved.
4. Remove from the heat, and (if also making black gummies) separate the mix into two bowls.
5. Add the activated charcoal to one bowl and mix well until dissolved.
6. Pour your gummy mixture into your chosen molds or trays
7. Refrigerate until solid (ideally, overnight).
8. If you choose to use a tray, cut gummies into squares.

Chocolate Cake Skulls

This healthy Halloween recipe is really all about getting creative with slight modifications of a classic everyone loves chocolate cake. There are incredible mini cake molds available online that you can use to turn your cake into spooky treats! You can also add some vanilla frosting to turn the skull white!

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 3 cups organic almond flour
• ¼ cup organic coconut flour
• ½ cup organic cacao powder
• ¼ cup organic dutch cacao powder (or ¼ cup more raw cacao powder)
• ½ cup sugar (coconut, maple, or monk fruit)
• ¼ cup collagen powder
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 large organic eggs
• 1 cup coconut milk
• ½ cup organic coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the icing: 

• 1 cup organic raw cashews (soaked in water overnight)
• ¼ cup water (at room temperature)
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup or honey
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean powder or vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
2. Grease the skull head molds with coconut oil and set them aside.
3. In a large bowl, mix all the wet ingredients.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
5. Add the dry ingredients into the bowl of wet ones and gently mix well until smooth.
6. Pour the batter into the molds until about ¾ full, and bake appropriately for the size of the molds. If they are closer to regular cupcake size, this should be 15-20 minutes. Air on the side of less time, testing to see if the inside is cooked through by inserting a toothpick. If it comes out with batter, cook for longer.
7. Let cakes cool completely before icing them with vanilla frosting.

For the icing:

1. Blend all the ingredients in a high-powered blender until smooth.

Date Caramel Candy Apples

Everyone remembers the big caramel apples from Halloween as a kid! This healthy Halloween recipe tastes identical to the caramels full of refined sugars… but is made with one ingredient: Medjool dates! This recipe’s key is using fresh, moist, sticky Medjool dates. If the dates aren’t as fresh, you can soak them for a couple of hours first.

Ingredients

• 20 fresh, organic, pitted Medjool dates
• Hot water (to thin)
• Sea salt (to taste)
• 6 organic apples
• 6 wooden sticks (like popsicles sticks)

Instructions

1. In a high-powered blender, add the pitted dates and a pinch of salt to a food processor and pulse a few times to chop the dates.
2. Start to blend on high, and add a little hot water if the paste doesn’t blend. You will only need a tiny amount of water if any. This is just to get the smooth caramel texture, which is mostly achieved by using fresh dates. Make sure the spread is thin enough to spread over the apples but thick enough to spread as a proper caramel layer.
3. Insert a wooden stick halfway into each apple’s core from the stem’s side.
4. Using a spatula, spread the date mixture over each apple, covering it entirely.
5. Place the caramel apples top side down on a baking sheet, and store in the fridge.

Chocolate Pretzel Spiders

This healthy Halloween recipe turns your average nutrient-dense bliss ball into a spooky Halloween treat by using pretzels to make the ball that looks like a spider. You can add chocolate chip eyes too!

Ingredients

• ½ cup soft Medjool dates pitted
• 1 cup cashews (or your nut of choice)
• ¼ cup collagen powder
• ⅓ cup organic desiccated coconut
• 3 tablespoons organic cacao powder
• ½ tsp sea salt
• A handful of gluten-free organic pretzels
• Optional: chocolate chips (for the “spider eyes”)

Instructions

1. Blend nuts in a food processor until it makes a flour
2. Add all the other ingredients into the food processor and blend on high until a big ball is formed.
3. Turn the paste into smaller 1-inch balls.
4. Break off pieces of the pretzels to form small curves, and use 3 on each side of each ball to make some legs for the spiders.
5. Optionally add two chocolate chips for the eyes!

Healthy Twix Bar

Twix chocolate bars are a Halloween favorite, but with ingredients like milk solids, soy lecithin, dextrose, palm oil, wheat, and artificial flavors—we can do better! This healthy Halloween recipe tastes just like the original but contains nutritious, non-toxic, whole-food ingredients. If you’re avoiding peanuts, you can swap the peanut butter for almond or cashew butter!

Ingredients

For the shortbread base:

• 1 ½ cups almond flour
• 3 tablespoons melted coconut oil
• 2.5 tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon cinnamon powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

For the middle layer:

• ⅔ cup organic unsweetened peanut butter (almond or cashew works, too)
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/4 cup organic coconut oil (melted)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

For the chocolate top:

• 3/4 cup organic dark chocolate
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• Pinch of sea salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F and line an 8×8 baking tray with baking paper.
2. Mix all the shortbread ingredients in a bowl until a crumbly mixture forms.
3. Press into the baking tray, forming an even layer for the base.
4. Bake for 10 minutes, then cool in the fridge for 20 minutes before adding the peanut caramel layer.
5. While the base layer chills, make your caramel layer by adding all the ingredients into a food processor and blending until smooth.
6. Add an even layer of caramel to the shortbread base, and refrigerate while you make the chocolate.
7. To make the chocolate, simply melt down your chosen chocolate, and stir in the coconut oil and salt. Then, pour the chocolate layer on top of the caramel layer and refrigerate for 2 hours to completely solidify the chocolate.
8. Remove from the tray carefully and with a sharp knife, cut into bite-sized (or bar-sized) pieces!
9. Store in the fridge or freezer.