Spooky Treats, no Scary Dairy

Halloween is coming and the geese are getting fat

Please put a penny in the old man’s hat

If you havent’ got a penny a ha’penny will do

If you haven’t got a ha’penny God bless you.

Did anyone else sing this at stranger’s doors all dressed up in your best homemade costume when you were a kid? Hoping for a kind response and a donation of an apple or some monkey nuts? What a difference there is today. Very few kids have homemade costumes. I know there’s a box of dress up clothes here with enough choice that nobody is asking me to make them something. When the kids go door to door these days, they are in professional looking costumes and just say trick or treat  and expect and receive a bag of sweets or crisps or popcorn and are delighted with themselves. I can’t do much to bring back the old ways, I will make a costume if the boys want me to, and I hope some year they will want me to. I make sure they are polite and grateful for anything they receive going door to door and as we are in the countryside it is mainly to houses of family anyway. I also try and make them sing or say a poem which works sometimes too (only at Granny or Grandad’s houses).

Is it me or is there way more of the E-number laden, gooey, sugary jellies and sweets around this year for Halloween? There are more eye balls, body parts, vampire fangs, zombie guts and spooky jellies around than you can shake a stick at.  I did my usual scout around the supermarkets the last couple of weeks. I was trying to take photos covertly this morning in Lidl as I met not one not two but three parents of my son’s classmates in there. I’m sure they thought I was mad. I can imagine the conversation “Yes, I’m em taking photos of the Halloween stock so I can remember it forever!”

Halloween preparation in the shops is getting earlier, I have been seeing this stuff since late September. And for the first time ever this year  I saw Christmas stuff while I was shopping for baking stuff for my kids’ birthdays in early September. I find myself doing this Halloween post ten days earlier than last year, and people are already arriving at my site looking for advent calendars etc. Anyway this is a topic for another day.

It’s coming whether we like it or not so here’s the low down on all the sugary sticky junk food.

Here is one of Tesco’s Halloween displays. There are some of our more everyday jellies in disguise for Halloween – Haribo Halloween jellies, Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles Halloween Edition bags which I think are just the purple and orange ones. They have cleverly put in some of the Christmas party tubs on the same shelf – Bassetts Trio, Natural Confectionery Company Trio, Maynards Trio and Haribo party tub. These are all dairy free, and Tesco’s own brand Vampire Veins and Zombie Guts are also dairy free. Be wary though, Chewits Vampire Fangs may contain traces of milk.

In both Aldi and Lidl I found lovely dairy free cake toppers, and I will be making Halloween fairy cakes topped with brains and ghosts and all sorts! Aldi have orange roll out icing and hundreds and thousands and ghost sprinkles which are all dairy free also. Happy cake making!

In Lidl they have a huge range of Halloween stuff from decorations to costumes complete with broomsticks, devil’s forks and scythes to all sorts of eyeballs and body part sweets to cute little baking moulds which you could use for more Halloween baking.

Dunnes carry the Murder Motel range and most of the same sweets as Tesco also.

I made a practice Halloween Bairín Breac this week, you can pop over to follow the easy recipe here. Also try my pumpkin muffins – best use I’ve found for pumpkin flesh!

Have a look at last year’s post for more tips for getting through Halloween dairy free and read here about the Teal Pumpkin Project.

Happy Halloween!

Disclaimer: I have checked ingredients on every product mentioned on this page. Please be careful with any products that do not contain allergy information as it may be a possible for cross contamination. If in doubt stick to the brands you know your kids are safe with. Please always check the labelling yourself as it is always subject to change.