Beetlejuice Themed Dinner

It’s time for another Halloween-themed dinner, and this time we’re dining with the ghost with the most – Beetlejuice!  Beetlejuice is a Halloween staple in our household, and a movie we find ourselves quoting all year round.  There are a lot of great food scenes in this movie, so it was a lot of fun creating this menu for our Beetlejuice Themed Dinner! 

It’s Showtime!

To kick things off for our Beetlejuice Themed Dinner, I served some roasted roaches as an appetizer.  Don’t worry – they aren’t REALLY roasted roaches.  These delicious morsels are actually cheese stuffed dates wrapped in bacon.  I found the idea and recipe over at Castellon’s Kitchen.  They sure looked disgusting but were VERY tasty! 

The salty bacon and sweet dates made a great contrast, and complemented the smooth, creamy center.  These were a hit at the party!  However, my five-year-old needed a little convincing that they were not, in fact, actual bugs before trying one.

Hope You Like Italian

“Haunted Shrimp Cocktail” Breadsticks & Marinara

One of the most ICONIC scenes in Beetlejuice involves a haunted shrimp cocktail, making this dish an obvious menu item for our Beetlejuice Themed Dinner.  But unfortunately, shrimp just isn’t for me.  So, I made this kid-friendly “haunted shrimp cocktail” instead.  Yes…I AM a child! 

Rather than serve the bugs of the sea *ahem* I mean shrimp and cocktail sauce, I created some shrimp-shaped breadsticks and served them with my homemade marinara.  You can find my Great-Grandma’s Marinara recipe HERE!  Trust me, you’ll be glad you did!

To create my shrimp, I bought a tube of dough from the grocery store.  I was looking for breadstick dough but had to settle for pizza dough.  I rolled it out and molded shrimp shapes to bake in the oven.  Once they were done, I painted them with a little bit of red food coloring mixed with some grain alcohol to give them a pinkish shrimp color.  Don’t worry, the alcohol evaporates as it dries, making this safe for kiddos.

All in all, this dish was much more labor intensive than just throwing together an actual shrimp cocktail.  But if you are a seafood wimp (like me) this is the next best thing to pay tribute to one of the BEST scenes in the movie!

Eyeball Stuffed Meatballs

We know Beetlejuice is a fan of Italian food as he offers an Italian meal to Adam and Barbara, so to accompany our breadsticks and marinara I created some spooky Eyeball Stuffed Meatballs.  We see plenty of creepy eyeballs in the film, particularly when Adam places one on each of his ten fingers!  So, when I saw this idea over at POPSUGAR, I knew they’d be a great addition for our Beetlejuice Themed Dinner.

Just a FEW eyeballs in the film…

To create the eyeball effect, I hollowed out a mozzarella ball and placed a halved green olive in the center.  Then I wrapped my meatball mix around the stuffed mozzarella ball to create a spooky eyeball effect!  I elected to use my own Italian Meatball recipe for this dish to serve with our Italian Marinara and breadsticks.  You can find my Great-Grandma’s Meatball Recipe HERE!

I Can’t Believe We’re Eating Cantonese

For this food reference in the film, we see the Deetz family eating Chinese takeout for dinner (much to Delia’s dismay).  A little Cantonese to go with our Italian…why not?! 

For our Chinese takeout, I made vegetable lo mein using a recipe I found over at Savory Bites Recipes.  However, I made a couple tweaks to our dish.  Because I happened to have rice wine vinegar on hand, I substituted that for the white vinegar as well as hoisin sauce for the dark soy sauce (they were out at the grocery store).  I also swapped out the celery for shredded cabbage to more easily sneak a veggie past my kids.  So delicious!

This recipe does utilize sriracha sauce for some heat.  After putting in the suggested amount, I realized this dish would be too spicy for my five-year-old.  But the rest of us loved it!  If you are planning to prepare this dish for more sensitive palates, I’d leave out the sriracha altogether.

Whoa, Sandworms.  Ya Hate ‘em, Right?  I HATE ‘EM MYSELF!

For dessert, I challenged myself to come up with a sandworm cookie.  Now here is my disclaimer: I am NOT a talented baker, NOR am I a talented sculptor.  But darn it, I REALLY wanted to make this cookie happen!

I tried to achieve these sandworm cookies but intertwining vanilla sugar cookie dough with chocolate sugar cookie dough.  I put a little black food coloring in the chocolate cookie dough to darken it up like the sandworm’s black stripes. 

Unfortunately, my chocolate cookie dough wanted to spread more than my vanilla dough, leaving some of my sandworms looking…a little crazy!  In hindsight, I probably should have just done the black stripes with frosting rather than a whole different dough.  Live and learn!

I used a thick icing to paint on the sandworm’s red eyes and blue lips.  And because I had some red sprinkles on hand, I tossed some on top of the red icing as well.  Why not?!

I included a photo of my most successful sandworm for obvious reasons haha and I’m not mad about the end result.  However, I don’t plan on creating any more artistic cookies in the near future!   

Hey, This Might Be a Good Look for Me

And finally, our beverage of the evening pays tribute to the end of the film (and Beetlejuice’s new look).  We see the Witch Doctor several times in the Neitherworld Waiting Room as well as the “very nice work” done to the shrunken-headed explorer sitting adjacent to him.  So, for our Beetlejuice Themed Dinner, I made a shrunken head apple cider. 

To make the shrunken heads, carve some scary and silly faces into peeled apples.  Then, bake those apples at 250 degrees for 1.5 – 2 hours, until they are wrinkly and slightly brown on the edges.  When the heads are nice and shrunken, toss them into your cider of choice!

BETELGEUSE! BETELGEUSE! BETELGEUSE!

I hope you enjoyed our Beetlejuice Themed Dinner as we get in the spirit of Halloween!  Do you have a favorite Halloween movie you’d like to see us create a themed dinner for?  Let us know in the comments!

Looking for more Halloween fun to have at home?  Check out our Ghostbusters Themed Dinner HERE and our Casper Themed Brunch HERE! 

We also rounded up some Disney Halloween crafts to make this fall HERE!

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