Hocus Pocus Dinner Party

For our final Halloween Themed Dinner, we had a Hocus Pocus Dinner Party with our close friends!

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that Halloween is a BIG DEAL in our household.  We have a bucket list of our favorite Halloween movies we look forward to watching every year, but this is IT, people!  The crème de la crème, the pièce de résistance, our absolute FAVORITE Halloween movie of all time – HOCUS POCUS!

Every year, we invite my friends over for a Hocus Pocus Dinner Party and enjoy a Halloween-themed meal during the movie.  We really outdid ourselves this year, so I decided to share our menu here on Inspiring Magical Memories!

Download a printable PDF of our menu by clicking the link below!

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Oh, Cheese and Crust!  He’s Lost His Head!

To kick things off, I wanted to pay tribute to our favorite “nice” zombie, Billy Butcherson.  Billy loses his head on more than one occasion in the film, so I thought it would be fitting to make our cheeseball appetizer in the shape of his missing head.  I served “dead man’s toes” (more commonly known as “carrots”) and Garden Veggie Ghosts + Bats chips I found at Target. You can also find them on Amazon HERE!

  I have to say, those little ghosts and bats were pretty adorable with their little spooky faces!

For my cheeseball, I used the following ingredients:

• 16oz cream cheese, softened
• ½ cup sour cream
• 8oz grated cheese (parmesan or sharp cheddar work great)
• ½ cup chopped nuts (cashews, walnuts, and almonds are a favorite of mine!)
• ½ tsp each of salt, pepper, and garlic powder
• ¼ tsp onion powder
• 4 stalks chopped green onion

I had grated Romano cheese and pine nuts on hand, so I utilized those in this recipe.  The great thing about making a cheeseball is you can easily incorporate ingredients you already have at home!

Once the cheeseball mixture was combined and firmed up again in the refrigerator, I shaped it to resemble Billy’s head.  From there, I used green olives for his eyes, and black olives for his mouth stitches and hair.

It’s Chungs!  Chungs?  Dead Man’s Chungs!

What really are “Dead Man’s Chungs?”  Well for our Hocus Pocus Dinner Party, it was the Italian sausage in our Dead Man’s Chungs Stew!  All movie references aside, this cauldron stew is really a Crockpot Pumpkin, Apple, and Sausage Stew that I make each year for our Hocus Pocus Party.  You can find my full recipe HERE!  I love making this stew this time of year because it incorporates a lot of my favorite fall flavors.  Plus, it’s a great way to use up your pumpkin scraps from carving jack-o-lanterns!

One of my friends brought pumpkin cornbread muffins that paired deliciously with this stew!  It’s definitely a meal I look forward to every year. Check out this great pumpkin cornbread recipe from Savory Nothings HERE!

Come, We Fly!

Because I knew we would be indulging in plenty of sweets during our Hocus Pocus Dinner Party, I wanted to serve something healthy as well.  I decided it would be fun to try and create a veggie tray that resembled my favorite witch, Winnifred Sanderson. 

I used cucumbers, red peppers, broccoli, and onion to create her likeness, as well as some mozzarella and olives for the eyes.  I’m kicking myself for not incorporating her iconic buck teeth, which could easily have been achieved with some additional small pieces of mozzarella.  If any readers create their own Winnifred Sanderson veggie tray with those beautiful buck teeth, some me your pics in the comments!

Spellbinding Sweets

As I mentioned before, I knew sweets would be a big component to our Hocus Pocus Dinner Party.  Here are a few offerings we had that are themed to the movie!

Lucky Rat Tails & Pretty Spiders

In the film, we see that Sarah Sanderson is a fan of rat tails and munching on “pretty” spiders.  So I made sure to offer both at our party.  Our “rat tails” were really just Red Vines, and our “pretty spiders” were Sour Octopus gummies.  Eight legs…eight tentacles…close enough for me!

BooOOOOOooook!

These Spell Book Brownies were SUPER simple to make.  I just baked a pan of brownies and cut them in rectangular shapes.  Then, I used gel icing to draw lines resembling the book and popped on a candy eyeball. 

Billy…You Maggoty Malfeasance!

During Halloween, I use any excuse I can to whip out my Skull Cakelet Pan to make some spooky treats.  For our Hocus Pocus Dinner Party, I decided to try making cookies in the cakelet pan and decorate them to look like Billy Butcherson.  I made a simple snickerdoodle cookie and added a little green and black food coloring to match his zombie flesh tone.  Then, I used some black icing to pipe his mouth stitching and hair.  Another super simple treat for the movie!

You can find the eyeball sprinkles and skull cakelet pan on Amazon.

I Put a Spell on You and Now You’re Mine

I created a Life Potion for the kids based on the bright green potion the Sanderson Sisters brewed for everlasting life.  To keep the recipe super simple, I just combined Sprite and green Kool Aid.  For an extra witchy element, I made ice cubes with little plastic spiders in them.  I also garnished the drinks with eyeballs and plenty of gummy worms.  The kids loved them!

One of my friends pointed out that our Lucky Rat Tails made excellent straws with the ends trimmed off, which made drinking this potion even MORE fun for the kids.  Double win!

It’s All Just a Bunch of Hocus Pocus

I hope you enjoyed our Hocus Pocus Dinner Party and have some fun ideas for hosting your own Halloween party!  Halloween is one of my favorite times of year because there are SO MANY fun things we get to do as a family, and our Halloween-themed dinners are just the beginning.

Do you have any favorite Halloween traditions you share as a family?  I’d love to hear about them in the comments! 

Looking for other Halloween-themed dinners?  Check out our Ghostbusters Dinner HERE and our Beetlejuice Dinner HERE!

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