Halloween cocktail garnish ideas that take five minutes
You don't need dry ice and a fog machine to make a Halloween cocktail look the part. Most of the drinks below are a normal cocktail with a spooky garnish, and most of the garnishes take under five minutes. Here are the ones we make every October, roughly in order of effort.
Zero effort: the pick does the work
The fastest Halloween garnish is a themed pick in a drink you already know how to make. A gin and tonic with a ghost pick holding a lime wedge. A dark rum and cola with a bat pick. A whiskey sour with a skull pick through the cherry. Guests see the topper before they taste anything, and that's the whole job. If you're hosting a big party, this is the move: one drink batched in a pitcher, one jar of picks, done. The full set of ghosts, bats, skulls and pumpkins lives in our Halloween collection.
Eyeball martini
A dirty martini with an "eyeball" is the classic. Stuff a large green olive with a slice of pimento or a small piece of red pepper so it looks like an iris, and skewer it on a pick. Two eyeballs on one pick is creepier than one. Use a olive pick if you want it to look intentional, or a skull pick if you want it to look unhinged. Fresh mozzarella balls with a blueberry pressed in also work for a mocktail version.
Blood-red cherries
Dark Amarena or Luxardo cherries are already the right color. Drop three on a pick into a Manhattan, an old fashioned, or a black cherry soda for the kids. Let a little of the syrup bleed down the side of the glass. A cherry pick makes it obvious what's on the stick, and the leopard bow reads as costume-party fun.
Black cocktails
Activated charcoal (a tiny pinch, food-grade) turns a lemon drop, a margarita or a gin fizz jet black. A quarter teaspoon per drink is plenty. Garnish with something white so it pops: a white sugar rim, a ghost pick, a lemon twist. Black vodka does the same job with less mess. Just tell guests it's charcoal before they ask.
Pumpkin everything
A pumpkin spice espresso martini, a bourbon and apple cider, or a pumpkin old fashioned with maple syrup all want a fall garnish. Cinnamon sticks, a dusting of nutmeg, a thin apple slice, and a pumpkin pick or one of our fall picks with acorns and leaves. These carry straight through Thanksgiving, so a set of 50 covers both holidays.
Candy corn layers
Orange juice at the bottom, a pale layer of pineapple juice or ginger ale in the middle, and a splash of cream or whipped cream on top gives you a candy corn look. Pour slowly over the back of a spoon to keep the layers. Add rum or vodka to the middle layer if you want it boozy. A pumpkin pick through an actual candy corn is the finishing touch.
Sugar rims that look like something
A black sugar rim on a white or orange drink, an orange sugar rim on a dark drink. Wet the rim with lime, dip in colored sanding sugar. For a "bloody" rim, dip in grenadine and let it drip down the outside of the glass before adding the drink. A skull pick sitting in a grenadine-rimmed glass of anything is about as easy as it gets.
Day of the Dead
If your party leans Día de los Muertos, go bright instead of dark: a margarita or a paloma with a Tajín rim, marigold petals, and our colorful skull picks in green, yellow, blue and red. They're the same picks people buy for Cinco de Mayo, so they earn their keep twice a year.
Setting up the bar
For a Halloween party, batch two cocktails (one dark, one bright) and one mocktail, and put out one garnish station: a bowl of stuffed olives, a bowl of dark cherries, lime and orange wedges, and a jar of mixed Halloween picks standing up. Guests will garnish their own and take pictures of it. Plan on two to three picks per guest across the night. Bamboo picks are compostable, so at the end you're clearing glasses, not washing skewers.
Keep reading: how to garnish an old fashioned, our martini garnish guide, and how many appetizers to make per person. Or browse every design in the cocktail picks collection.
