Put a healthier twist on Halloween this year with this adorable and creative Skeleton Veggie Tray! This food art project is great for an appetizer, Halloween party or fun play date snack!
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đź‘ŤWhy We Love this Skeleton Veggie Tray
An edible craft! We love making crafts that we can actually eat!
A healthy twist! Aside from just being festive, we were also excited to make this Halloween veggie tray to balance the amount of sugar that gets passed around this season.
Supports creativity! We gave our kids a bunch of veggies (a lot of which I pre-cut), a cutting board, a couple of kid-safe knives, and toothpicks and let creativity lead the way! As a bonus, the kids made some other Halloween veggie monsters to go with it!
Learn about cauliflower! We used cauliflower for the skull and shared some interesting facts about this veggie with kids, like how its a member of the cruciferous (or cabbage) family of vegetables and is a good source of fiber.
đź›’ Ingredients
For this skeleton veggie tray, we used the a variety of veggies, but you can choose whatever combination of veggies you'd like!
- For the skull- Cauliflower is ideal, with grape tomatoes and/or olives for the eyes and nose.
- For the body-Use any combination of sliced and peeled celery, carrot sticks, broccoli, tomatoes, and onion slices. Optional: You can use mushrooms (not pictured) for kneecaps.
- For the hands and feet- Use celery slices for hands and carrot sticks for the fingers. Use remining onion slices for the skeleton's feet.
Note: If you want to use leftover bell pepper stems for a fun craft, check out our Peppers Art craft.
🔪 Kitchen Essentials
- Kids' kitchen knives- These are great knives for kids!
- Cutting board - For chopping veggies
- Toothpicks - For connecting veggies and forming your skeleton veggie tray
Note: For recommendations on kids' kitchen knives, check out our post Testing Kids Kitchen Knives.
👩‍🍳 How to Make a Skeleton Veggie Tray
- Form the Skull: Make the skull using cauliflower. Slice the head of cauliflower in half and use toothpicks to carve out holes for the eyes, nose and chin structure. Fill each eye socket with a grape tomato and the nose hole with a olive. Note: The carving is a task for adults, not small children.
- Make the Body: Use a combination of celery, carrots and tomatoes to create the outline of your skeleton's body, arms and legs. Onion slices can be used for the hip bones, and mushrooms work great for the kneecaps! Combine carrot sticks and peppers to create your skeleton's ribs.
- Create Hands & Feet: Use (peeled) celery slices for your skeleton's hands and carrot sticks for the fingers. Use remining onion slices for the skeleton's feet.
✔️Tips & Tricks
- Use any veggies you'd like. A variety of vegetables can be used for this Halloween veggie tray, so feel free to get creative with ingredients!
- Get inspired! I would suggest pulling up some Google images for veggie skeletons or veggie monsters to get your kids' creative juices flowing.
- Cut veggies ahead of time, so the kids can get right to work.
- Use toothpicks to carve cauliflower's head structure. This is a task for adults or older children. For skull ideas, we really loved The Right on Mom's Vegan Blog Post: Halloween Veggie Platter: Cauliflower Skull.
- Use extra veggies to make Halloween monsters! In the end, we had four Halloween Veggie Tray masterpieces!
🥕Add a Dip!
You can buy a store-made Ranch Dressing or try our awesome 4 Ingredient Guacamole! Because we got a mega load of Lipton's Onion Mix at Costco the other day, we decided to just make their Classic Onion dip. It's super easy. You just add 1 packet of Lipton's Onion dry mix to 16 oz of sour cream, stir together and then refrigerate for a little while. Done and done!
🧊 Storing Leftovers
Leftover veggies can be stored in the fridge in airtight containers for up to 5 days. We love having pre-sliced veggies to snack on throughout the week!
We also ended up roasting a lot of the cauliflower and broccoli (with garlic and olive oil) to have with dinner. Just watch out for toothpicks in the veggies. I speak from experience here!
🍂 Other Fall Crafts
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Skeleton Veggie Tray
Equipment
- cutting board
- kids' kitchen knives
- toothpicks
Ingredients
- 1-2 cauliflower heads sliced in half
- 2 bell peppers sliced lengthwise intro strips
- 4 mushrooms
- 3-5 carrots peeled and cut into strips (see how to cut carrot sticks for tips!)
- 5-10 stalks celery peeled and cut in half and into strips
- 4 grape tomatoes
- 1 black olive
- 1 red onion sliced crosswise
- 1 cucumber sliced into rounds
- ranch or veggie dip optional
Instructions
- Make the Body: Use a combination of celery, carrots and tomatoes to create the outline of your skeleton's body, arms and legs. Onion slices can be used for the hip bones, and mushrooms work great for the kneecaps! Combine carrot sticks and peppers to create your skeleton's ribs.Â
- Create Hands & Feet: Use (peeled) celery slices for your skeleton's hands and carrot sticks for the fingers. Use remining onion slices for the skeleton's feet.
Notes
- Use any veggies you'd like. A variety of vegetables can be used for this recipe, so feel free to get creative with ingredients!
- Get inspired! I would suggest pulling up some Google images for veggie skeletons or veggie monsters to get your kids' creative juices flowing.
- Cut veggies ahead of time, so the kids can get right to work.
- Use toothpicks to carve cauliflower's head structure. This is a task for adults or older children. For skull ideas, we really loved The Right on Mom's Vegan Blog Post: Halloween Veggie Platter: Cauliflower Skull.
- Use extra veggies to make Halloween monsters! In the end, we had four Halloween Veggie Tray masterpieces!
Nutrition
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. While we are not certified nutritionists, we work with a WordPress-integrated nutrition API to calculate our recipes' ingredient values.
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