Halloween is just days away and to be honest, I have yet to get myself into that “spooky” mood. I suppose I’m not into Halloween as I am with Valentine’s Day or Lunar New Year. With Halloween just a week away, I wanted to surprise my friends with some festive pastries! This recipe is pretty much the same as my Totoro Toaster Pastries, although I did have to make some slight alterations.

Easy Halloween Pastries

I recently discovered that I love baking more than cooking, especially cute artsy desserts! I decided to make this Halloween dessert using pie crust. You can also use puff pastry as well. I find that both puff pastry and pie crust are pretty much the same. Unless you’re an avid baker or have foodie friends, they might not taste the difference. Of course, take this with a grain of salt because I don’t cook or bake that often.

Halloween Pastries Using Pie Crust

For this recipe, I chose the easiest route and chose not to make the filling from scratch. Since these pastries are going to be Halloween festive, I wanted the filling to be cherry-filled so it can look like blood!

Ingredients for the Halloween Pie Crust Pastries

• Premade Pie Crusts
• Cherry Filling
• ~1 tablespoon of butter
• ~1 cup of powdered sugar
• ~1 teaspoon of corn syrup
• Milk
• Red food coloring

I decided to do a ghost and two hands. First, I found a printout of a ghost and a hand, and then made a cut out of it. With a 9-inch pie crust, I was able to make 2 sheets of ghosts and 3 sheets of a hand.

Assembling the Halloween Pastries

Next, fill the sheet of pie crust with cherry filling and then cover it with another sheet of pie crust. Afterward, seal the edges of the pie crust using a fork. Because I didn’t have any eggs, I decided to top the pastries with a thin layer of butter. Feel free to use egg wash! Eggwash gives the pastries that golden brown look. I also poked holes and created slits on the hands.  

Once they’re ready to be baked, I popped them into the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. Since I had an odd number of hands, one of them was only one sheet rather than two sheets. This caused my hand to turn out burnt. It’s important to keep an eye on the pastries every few minutes are so!

While the hand and ghost pastries are baking, I made my icing to decorate! To make the icing, mix powdered sugar, corn syrup, and a splash of milk together. I also added a few drops of red food coloring.

You can make the icing as stiff or liquid as you want by adding more powdered sugar or milk. Since I was trying to make it seem like blood, I made the icing more on the liquid side. This will allow me to mimic dripping blood. Gruesome!

Decorating Your Spooky Pastries

Once the desserts are baked, depending on how you want to decorate them, you can wait until the pastries are cooled down a bit to start putting the icing on them, or you can start decorating right when they come out of the oven. I decided since dripping blood is what I was going for, I started decorating them right away.

You can also use toothpicks to create small details on the pastries!

After the pastries were done, I delivered them to my friend’s house. They all loved how festive and spooky these pastries were! Hearing that made me so happy – I want to bake more treats for my friends. Their happiness is my happiness!

What should I make next?