Easy Halloween Sweets: 3 Fun Recipes to Try Before October 31

Something is moving in the oven. A hand with the fingers curling, a jack-o’-lantern grinning through the glass, a row of mummies peering out from behind golden bandages. Don’t scream: they’re only puff pastry. But be warned, cut into the hand and the filling oozes out, red as blood. Three scares, one roll of dough, and not one of them takes more than an hour.

Sweet Puff Pastry Mummies fold puff pastry over a spoonful of raspberry jam, then wrap it in thin strips like bandages. Two hazelnut halves peek out of a slit as eyes. They bake at 350°F for 25 minutes, and any jam that leaks only makes them look more realistic.

Pro tip: overlap the strips slightly as you wrap, and leave the slit for the eyes just below the first wrap.

Bloody Puff Pastry Hand starts with a paper template traced from your own hand. Two puff pastry cutouts are sealed around raspberry jam, then marked with fingernails and knuckle slits. It bakes at 420°F for 15 to 20 minutes, and the jam oozes out when you slice it.

Pro tip: keep the knuckle slits shallow, as the recipe warns. Cutting too deep can open the dough.

Puff Pastry Pumpkins cut puff pastry into 3-inch squares, half of them carved with a jack-o’-lantern face. The whole squares get a spoonful of orange marmalade and the carved ones go on top. Brushed with egg yolk and brown sugar, they bake at 350°F for 25 minutes.

Pro tip: cut the eyes and mouth from cardboard first, as the recipe suggests, so every pumpkin gets the same face.

Bake these early and Halloween night runs itself. The pumpkins keep two to three days under a glass dome, the hand about two, and the mummies one, with a quick warm-up in the oven to bring back the crunch.