In honor of my favorite day of the year, I decided to recreate some popular Pinterest recipes. Here’s how it went.

*Originally published on October 30, 2020:

Ahhh, Pinterest! Land of crafts and recipes that many of us aspire to try and that not everyone manages to achieve (like these attempts).

For Halloween this year, I wanted to try my hand at some spooky-inspired recipes, to help me become more comfortable in the kitchen (and more artistic with my cooking). I picked three of the ones that looked great for parties so that you can do the same in the future, if you want. I’ll post a link to each original recipe if you’re interested. I had a lot of fun making these, and if you recreate them, I hope you have just as much fun! Here we go!

Recipe 1: Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies

I will begin this by providing a disclaimer: I do not currently have enough counter space in my tiny kitchen to hold a fancy mixer, and so I was unfortunately forced to use a box mix to make these brownies. Luckily, this Pinterest recreation is more about the decoration, so I hope you can forgive me for that.

Anyway, here is the original photo of what I was trying to make:

Courtesy of craftymorning.com (via Pinterest)

Looks cool, right? Hocus Pocus is a cinematic icon, and I watch it every year on Halloween. Naturally, I had to make these brownies. I feel like they were pretty hard to mess up, and I think they turned out well.

What do you think?

Courtesy of the author

In case you were wondering, I did indeed quote the movie while making these. “Booooooooooooook!”

Make them here.

Recipe 2: Spider Bread Bowl

I don’t know if this would be recognized as a fail, but it’s definitely not a complete success. I had all the required ingredients, but what I failed to notice was the tiny hole in the bag of frozen dinner rolls. This tiny hole is the cause of my semi-fail.

Before I get into that, here is what I was attempting to create:

Courtesy of itsalwaysautumn.com (via Pinterest)

Looks awesome. Did mine look awesome? I’ll let you be the judge in a minute. I had intended to make this spider one day, and to prepare, I took the frozen rolls out of the freezer and moved them into the fridge to thaw. Then other things happened, and I had to postpone making them to another day. So, I put them back in the freezer. On the day I actually decided to make them, I put them back in the fridge again, but when I went to take them out to use them, the entire bag had inflated and expanded! Basically, the rolls had decided to rise on their own in the bag, before I needed them to.

Ok, so I just decided to skip that step in the recipe. Unfortunately, because the dough had risen, the rolls were not rolls anymore, and the bag was just a giant lump of dough. So, I had to estimate the size of each piece of the spider.

This is where my semi-fail happened. Here is the evidence:

Courtesy of the author

Go ahead; feel free to scroll back up to the original and compare. See? As Maxwell Smart used to say: “Missed it by that much!"

You can make your own here.

Luckily, I had a slightly better experience with this next one.

Recipe 3: Witches’ Brew/Shrunken Head Apple Cider

This recipe has two titles because I technically got it from two different sources: Pinterest and Better Homes and Gardens (BHG). Essentially, I used the recipe from BHG for the apples and followed Pinterest for the cider part.

Here is what I was trying to make:

Courtesy of mightymrs.com (via Pinterest)

The BHG recipe said that Granny Smith apples were the best ones to use in order to maximize the shriveled effect. I don’t eat Granny Smith apples, and so I used the ones that were already in my fridge: Pink Ladies (my favorite). These apples are on the small side, so when they shriveled, they ended up being super tiny. The process was simple enough: after peeling and carving the apples, you dip them in a lemon juice and salt mixture, then bake them for 8 HOURS, and let them sit in the oven overnight. So this is technically a two-day recipe.

My apples, being pretty small, didn’t float perfectly in the cider as I wanted them to. Instead, they did this:

Courtesy of the author

But, here is what they looked like before going in:

Courtesy of the author

I don’t know about you, but I think this one turned out pretty good, too. I’ll call it a success! And it was tasty, too!

Wanna make it? Go here.

I definitely want to do this again—maybe for Thanksgiving or the winter holidays? Let me know in the comments if you want to see more, or if you’ve done any Halloween recipes from Pinterest and want to share!