No Halloween party is complete without a spread of creative (or super creepy) baked goods. While you could go the DIY route, freehanding festive designs on cookies or cakes, adding a few tools to your bakeware arsenal is never a bad idea. Here we've rounded up the best cake pans, molds, cookie cutters and cookie stamps to make Halloween baking a little less scary.
When sourcing these products, we took the following factors into consideration:
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Versatility: Is it oven and freezer friendly? Or could it be used to make a variety of treats?
Design: Does it embrace the Halloween spirit with a cute or chilling motif?
Finish: Is it nonstick, requiring less oil and ensuring an easy clean-up?
If you're ready to trick-or-treat yo'self to some tasty and easy to prepare baked goods, add some of these spooky supplies to your online shopping cart.
1. Haunted Skull Cakelet Pan
Cakelets are the grown-up version of cupcakes. While they might be a little messy sans wrapper, these molds create thoroughly detailed (and delicious) treats. This cast-aluminum cakelet pan by Nordic Ware features a nonstick finish that makes clean-up a breeze. Despite the nonstick label, it's a good idea to oil and flour the pan to make sure the skulls remain perfectly intact. This product yields six individual-sized cakes with a creepy skull motif that's perfect for Halloween or Día de los Muertos celebrations. The five-cup capacity pan comes with a lifetime warranty and measures 12.25 inches long, 2.25 wide and 13.5 inches high. Decorate your skulls with blood-red icing, powdered sugar or cinnamon-candy eyes, and don't forget to say "bone appétit" when you serve them to your friends and family.
Gift your favorite baker this 23-piece set that comes with eight cookie stamps, 10 BPA-free icing bags, four stainless steel decorating tips, a plastic coupler for changing tips, and a handy storage box. The spring-loaded cookie stamps imprint detailed motifs including a pumpkin, haunted house, bat, mummy, ghost, spider web, witch's hat and "Boo!" Akin to coloring between the lines, these ABS plastic stamps take the guesswork out of cookie decorating. For best results, roll out dough to ¼-inch thickness between sheets of parchment paper or plastic wrap and pop it in the freezer for a few minutes before you begin stamping. It's important to keep the dough cold to prevent the cookies from losing any detail. If they begin to expand while you're still working, you can put them back in the freezer until the oven has heated to your desired temperature (just make sure they don't turn solid!).
3. Halloween Silicone Mold
If it's a variety of spooky shapes you seek, nab one of these silicone molds from Sur la Table featuring three grinning jack-o'-lanterns, a blood-thirsty bat, a "humerus" skeleton, and a ghost that looks like he's just been accused of slamming a door shut to frighten the living. Made of non-toxic and food-safe silicone, the mold can be used in the freezer or oven (up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit). It's dishwasher safe and measures 9 inches long and 6.5 inches wide. Use the mold to whip up cake pops, brownies, gelatin and other ghoulish goodies, just be sure to spray it lightly with cooking oil before you begin.
Amok, amok, amok! This trio of plastic cookie cutters pays homage to "Hocus Pocus," the iconic '90s Disney film set in Salem, Massachusetts. The set features the visages of the Sanderson Sisters—Winifred, Mary and Sarah. Each cookie cutter measures approximately 3.1 inches long, 1 inch wide and 3 inches high. If you're planning a "Hocus Pocus" viewing party, you could complement the set with cat, moon, cauldron, gravestone or pumpkin-shaped cookies. And with "Hocus Pocus 2" slated for release in 2022, you could use these witchy forms again for the premiere on Disney+.
5. Mini Brain Silicone Mold by Celebrate It® Halloween
Why bother with a life-sized gelatin mold of a brain that no one's going to eat when you could make miniature, noggin-shaped candies for your upcoming Halloween party? This affordable silicone mold features six cavities and can be used in the freezer or oven (up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit). To create these gorey goodies, use candy melts for the molded exterior (a combination of pink and white for a life-like effect), and your desired filling for the center. Nerds or M&M's are a less messy option, but peanut butter fudge and jelly makes for a sanguine surprise. If you're looking for a silicone mold that's not so disturbing, Michaels also sells a version with a tombstone design.
We're not all natural-born cookie decorators, and that's okay! Create professional-looking sweets in seconds using Nordic Ware's cast-aluminum stamps with wooden handles. This set of three includes a spider, pumpkin, and cat stretching out on a crescent moon. The product is made in the USA and touts a lifetime warranty, so you'll be able to enjoy it for many Halloweens to come. Stamping a design onto a cookie is super easy—all you have to do is form your chilled dough into one-inch balls and press the stamp down firmly on each morsel, working in a circular motion. Once you release the stamp, you'll have a devilishly delicious cookie that's ready to bake.
7. Williams Sonoma Halloween Dancing Skeleton Cast-Aluminum Cake Pan
Move over, Dancing Pumpkin Man, there's a new bone-shaking duo in town. This tombstone-shaped, cast-aluminum cake pan boasts a nonstick finish, although you should always use oil and flour to prevent "any fractures." It's oven-safe (up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit), but cannot be put in the dishwasher or scrubbed with abrasive cleaners that might cause scratches. The pan measures 13 ¼ inches long, 10 inches wide, 1 inch high and has a 1.75-cup capacity. The dancing skeletons are a great conversation starter and allow guests to serve themselves, whether they prefer an arm, a leg or merely a hip bone.
