Halloween Skeleton Veggie Tray
Put a healthier twist on Halloween this year with this adorable Halloween skeleton veggie tray! Arrange cauliflower florets, broccoli, and colorful veggies into a spooky skeleton shape — no cooking required and kids love helping assemble it. Perfect for a Halloween party appetizer, school snack, or fun playdate activity!
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If you love festive food, jazz up your Halloween spread even more with this hilarious apple teeth snack and our spooky spider sandwiches!
Why We Love This Halloween Skeleton Veggie Tray
- An edible craft! We love making crafts that we can actually eat!
- A veggie 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.
🛒 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
👩🍳How to Assemble a Skeleton Veggie Tray
Step 1: Form the Skull. 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 an olive. Note: The carving is a task for adults, not small children.
Step 2: Make the Body: Use a combination of celery, carrot sticks, tomatoes, onions, and mushrooms to create your skeleton’s body.
Step 3: 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 for the Best Skeleton Veggie Tray
- 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.
- Choose the right knives! If kids are helping out, we love these kids’ kitchen knives. For recommendations on kids’ kitchen knives, check out our post Testing Kids Kitchen Knives.
- Use toothpicks to carve cauliflower’s head structure. This is a task for adults or older children. Toothpicks can also be used to connect veggies and form your skeleton.
- Use extra veggies to make Halloween monsters! In the end, we had four Halloween Veggie Tray masterpieces!
🍽️ How to Serve
Serve this fun and spooky snack on a tray or cutting board for your family or guests alongside your favorite vegetable dip! This makes a great, non-sugary, pre-trick-or-treating snack on Halloween!
🥕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!
❓FAQ
Yes, you can make this Halloween vegetable tray a few hours a head of time. However, since chopped veggies tend to dry out after a few hours, we recommend slicing veggies and storing them in airtight containers in the fridge until ready to assemble and serve your skeleton tray.
If you don’t have a big enough party tray, feel free to assemble and serve your skeleton on a large cutting board or baking sheet. Or, you can simply cover a clean surface with parchment paper or foil, and serve your veggie tray right there!
Absolutely — kids love arranging the bones! Pre-cut the vegetables and let kids place each piece to build the skeleton. It’s a great way to get kids excited about eating vegetables and a fun Halloween activity that results in a healthy snack.
🎃 Make it a Fun Halloween Night!
While the kids arrange the skeleton bones, get dinner started! Our non spicy chili is ready in 28 minutes — the perfect cozy Halloween dinner to serve alongside your spooky veggie tray. Add our Halloween fruit kabobs for a complete healthy Halloween spread!
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Halloween Skeleton Veggie Tray
Equipment
- cutting board
- kids' kitchen knives
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
- 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.
Notes
- 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.
- Choose the right knives! If kids are helping out, we love these kids’ kitchen knives. For recommendations on kids’ kitchen knives, check out our post Testing Kids Kitchen Knives.
- Use toothpicks to carve cauliflower’s head structure. This is a task for adults or older children. Toothpicks can also be used to connect veggies and form your skeleton.
- Use extra veggies to make Halloween monsters! In the end, we had four Halloween Veggie Tray masterpieces!
Nutrition
The nutrition facts provided are calculated using a third-party tool and are estimates only. Actual nutritional content may vary based on the ingredients and brands you use, as well as portion sizes. For accurate results, please consult a registered dietitian or nutritionist.
