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Whether you see Halloween as an All Saints Day marketing spinoff or an insidious Celtic heresy, kids across the country generally couldn’t care less. For them it’s all about adult-sanctioned naughtiness and scoffing sweets at a perfect time to cause maximum orthodontic devastation. But hey, it’s tradition so wind yer neck in, grandad. Your job as an adult is merely to make it as spectacular as possible – at the very least, more spectacular than your immediate neighbours. The minimum requirement is to carve a jack-o-lantern out of an unsuspecting pumpkin (there are some ), but I think we can do better than that, so please send in your favourite ghoulish foods. Here are a few of mine.

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Glowing fluorescent jellies are brilliant. Make them with tonic water and place them on a UV light - the quinine that gives tonic water its pleasant bitterness lights up spookily. And for grown-ups, you can make them with gin too. Make up your jelly using leaf gelatine, using the instructions on the packet, but with about 25% higher concentration of gelatine than stated (to ensure it sets well). Use tonic as your liquid, add the juice of one lemon and 50g caster sugar per 500ml, and leave for 3-5 hours in a fridge. That way your jelly should still be fizzy, even though it’s set, and you should have bubbles ‘frozen’ in the middle.

For simple gruesome pleasure, you can buy a good (but sometimes pricey) range of from big department stores, and they are always fun to eat. Perhaps offer a dip into the pick-n-mix only after the kids have scoffed a fat-bottomed ant? But if you’re too squeamish for that, you can make food look like , , or ...

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You could serve a deep blood-red borscht or this simple (but quite similar) hot blood soup. Kids often find this from my C³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Gastronuts series hilarious too. For adults, Bloody Mary soup is excellent – it’s basically just a huge Bloody Mary, but with more tomatoes and a bit less vodka. For simple, scary-looking food, you can make gruesome-looking gimlet eyeballs out of steamed Brussels sprouts rolled in beetroot red food colouring (add some concentrated blackcurrant juice for flavour and you may find your kids eating sprouts out of choice!). My kids love to eat delicious marinated (mainly because I present them as chicken nuggets!).

Food with a life of its own is fun too. Sprinkling popping candy crumbs onto their food (especially with thin slices of pineapple) is great fun, especially if you don’t tell the kids what you’re doing. There are lots of recipes around for . I also love to serve foods that scare the living daylights out of kids – nip down to your local Chinese shops for instant jellyfish salad, black fungus (great in salads), or seaweed for lots of squeals and giggles.

Of course, you can also take the whole gig a little more seriously too: after making a TV series about Feasts we now celebrate the (the day after Halloween) – it’s a great opportunity to talk about death and our lost family and friends in a relaxed, unthreatening way. It’s a very food-and-drink based affair, too, when you cook meals that your loved ones enjoyed when they were alive. It may sound odd, but it’s very therapeutic! Here are some classic .

What extraordinary foods do your kids love, or gave you a glorious fright when you were little? Because of course, no food scares you now you’re a grown-up, does it…? Sheep’s eyeball anyone?

Stefan Gates is a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ presenter and food writer.

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