20 Low Sugar Recipes to Make this Halloween

Hands up who dreads Halloween?

If you are a parent trying to keep your children’s (and your own!) sugar intake to the World Health Organisation recommended daily allowance, then Halloween can be a nightmare, in every sense of the word. It’s the most sugar-laden celebration of the year, and candy is worshipped then in a way it never quite manages to be any other time of year.

But I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I have gleaned both from my own experience and from the advice of older and wiser sugar avoiding families. These tried-and-tested tips don’t take away from the magic of Halloween (or Night of Light for those who don’t celebrate the spooky version), but do massively reduce the sugar intake of the holiday. To read more about my top 5 tips for a low sugar Halloween, click here.

And today I am hoping to help you further by rounding up some sugar free or low sugar, healthy recipes (along with a few tips for “Halloween-ifying” them) that will help the end of this month be an enjoyable experience for everyone, including parents who get to not have to deal with the anxiety, intense emotional highs and sugar crashes and general mania that accompanies over-consumption of sugar!

So here are my top 20 low sugar recipes to get you through Halloween:

1. Low Sugar Pumpkin Cookies – use a pumpkin or ghost cookie cutter to shape them and use cacao nibs, really dark chocolate chips or melted 85% dark chocolate in a sip-lock bag with a tiny hole snipped to make an accurate piping bag to add some features like eyes, mouths, noses, etc.
2. Fruit Mummies – ok, so not exactly a recipe, but an easy way to Halloween-up fruit for little kiddies!

   

3. Pumpkin Pie Smoothie – use rice syrup or stevia instead of maple syrup and cut out some pumpkin-carving features from black card to tape to the front of the glass, like Taesha does here.
4. Carrot, Miso & Double Ginger Soup
5. Spinach Monster Ice Cream
6. Green Mac ‘n’ Cheese – if you’re not into the spooky side of Halloween, why not have a superhero theme instead and make “Hulk” pasta and…
7. Sugar Free Green (Lantern) Smoothie (or stick with the spooky theme with this Frankenstein Smoothie Bowl)

   

8. Pumpkin Hummus – use celery and cucumber or green beans to make “stalks” that double up as dippers!
9. Pumpkin Clementines
10. Sugar Free Pumpkin Spice Latte – one for the adults, to keep us going!
11. Healthy Pumpkin Pie with Cream – drizzle the cream lightly in a spiral and drag a toothpick across the cream in various places to create a messy “spider’s web” effect
12. Low Sugar Pumpkin & Ginger Cake 
13. Low Sugar Gingerbread Men – cut them into Halloween or Night of Light shapes (angels, monsters, pumpkins, witches’ hats, etc) using cookie cutters or a knife and a skilled hand
14. Apple Monsters

    

15. Shepherd’s Pie Stuffed Jack-o-Lanterns – because who says all Halloween food has to be sweet!
16. Halloween Baked Potato Skin Pizzas
17. “Boo-nanas” – use my banana ice lolly recipe using yogurt instead of chocolate, then roll in dessicated coconut and add a couple of cacao nib or really dark chocolate eyes and a mouth!
18. Apple Jack-o-Lanterns
19. Sugar Free Marshmallows – I like to make a big batch of these, divvy them up into a batch of big marshmallows and mini ones, freeze them spread out on a baking tray and then keep them in bags in the freezer and take a few out to add to hot chocolate or to make s’mores with All Day I Dream About Food’s sugar free graham crackers. If you are having a Night of Light, white fluffy marshmallows are a must!
20. Tortilla Bats with Salsa – I love finding fun savoury recipes for celebrations, and these are so cute (sorry kids, I meant terrifying of course)!

I hope these ideas get you inspired and encouraged so you feel like maybe, just maybe, your family could have a healthy Halloween. Or at least a healthier one, because there’s nothing wrong with a piece of candy or some other treat now and then! 🙂

If you want some more ideas and encouragement, check out our Party Survival course for low sugar families here. And here are a few more healthy Halloween roundups for you – not all low sugar or processed food free, but at least healthier than your average Halloween treats!

20 Healthy (well Healthier!) Halloween Treats from The Natural Nurturer

64 Non-Candy Halloween Snack Ideas from Listotic

17 Spooktacular, Healthy Halloween Treats, Snacks & Beverages from Two Healthy Kitchens

13 Healthy Halloween Treats from Hello, Wonderful