A Sweet & Spooky Halloween Dessert Table

Some Halloween desserts are all about the recipe, but sometimes it’s really about creating something beautiful.

This Halloween dessert table was filled with cakes, cupcakes, cookies and lots of little Halloween details, and I had so many pretty photos that it deserved a post of its own.

Instead of anything too scary, I went with the sweeter side of Halloween: little white ghosts, colorful candies, decorated sugar cookies and plenty of orange, black and white. There are a few unexpected colors mixed in too, which keeps everything feeling playful instead of overly themed.

If you’re planning a Halloween party, dessert table or just looking for some cute Halloween baking inspiration, save your favorite ideas from this one. You definitely don’t have to make every dessert to recreate the look!

The Halloween Dessert Table

My favorite dessert tables always have a mix of different shapes, sizes and heights.

For this one, the cakes create the focal points, while cupcakes and cookies fill in the table around them. Having several smaller desserts also makes the whole setup feel abundant without needing five elaborate cakes.

The menu included:

I love that every dessert is different but they all look like they belong together.

Steal This Dessert Table Formula

If you want to recreate the look without making every dessert pictured here, use this simple formula:

1 statement cake + 1 simple cake + 1 cupcake + 2 cookies

That’s plenty of variety for a beautiful dessert spread.

For an even smaller gathering, choose one cake, one decorated cookie and one easy dessert. Put them on stands at different heights and suddenly three desserts feel like an entire dessert table.

Pumpkin Ghost Icon Cake

This might be one of my favorite cakes on the table.

The cake itself is pumpkin cake covered in orange vanilla buttercream, then little white buttercream ghosts are piped all the way around the outside.

Each ghost can be a little different, which is part of what makes the cake so cute.

It’s unmistakably Halloween without being spooky, and the orange-and-white combination looks so pretty mixed with the other desserts.

An Idea Worth Saving

You could use this same decorating idea on almost any cake.

Try:

Orange frosting + white ghosts
White frosting + black bats
Pink frosting + white ghosts
Chocolate frosting + orange pumpkins

Once you have a basic cake you love, changing the little piped icons gives you an entirely different dessert.

Halloween Candy Icon Cake

The second cake is a vanilla bean cake decorated with tiny piped candies around the outside.

I love icon cakes because there are so many ways to customize them. Rather than covering the cake in elaborate piping, the little designs become the decoration.

For Halloween, candy was an obvious choice.

It’s playful and colorful and looks especially cute next to the more traditional orange pumpkin cake.

And this is a good reminder that your Halloween desserts don’t all have to be orange and black.

Choose a Halloween Color Palette

One of the easiest ways to make a dessert table look cohesive is to decide on your colors before you start decorating.

You don’t need every dessert to use every color.

For this table, the overall look comes from repeating orange, white and black, then bringing in little pops of color through candy and decorated cookies.

If you’re planning your own Halloween table, try choosing:

3 main colors + 1 or 2 accent colors

For example:

Orange + cream + black + pink
Black + white + lavender + orange
Pink + orange + cream + brown
Orange + sage + cream + black

It makes shopping for sprinkles, cupcake liners, frosting colors and decorations so much easier.

Halloween Sugar Cookies

You can’t really have a Halloween dessert table without sugar cookies.

The decorated cookies bring so much personality to the table because every shape can be a little different. Pumpkins, ghosts, black cats, candy and Halloween sayings are all easy ways to fill out a platter.

I especially love using sugar cookies around cakes and cupcakes because they’re flat enough to fill little empty spaces on a dessert table without competing with the larger desserts.

They’re also one of the easiest things to make ahead.

Bake and decorate them before party day, then all you have to do is arrange them.

Vanilla BEan Cupcakes

Not every dessert on a themed table needs to be complicated.

These Vanilla Bean Cupcakes give the eye somewhere to rest between all of the decorated cakes and cookies.

That’s actually one of my favorite dessert-table tricks: if you have one or two really detailed desserts, let some of the others be simple.

A beautifully piped (or scooped in my case) cupcake can be enough.

Vanilla Smash Cookies with Almond Buttercream

These Vanilla Smash Cookies are thick, soft, cake-y cookies topped with almond buttercream. Think of the oversized frosted bakery cookies everyone loves.

They’re such a fun dessert-table cookie because they’re bigger and more substantial than a traditional sugar cookie.

Put them on a cake stand or stack a few together on a platter to add another height and texture to the table.

And vanilla with pink almond buttercream is one of those simple flavor combinations that somehow disappears very quickly whenever I serve it.

The Secret to a Pretty Dessert Table Isn’t More Dessert

Here’s something I’ve learned after putting together a lot of dessert tables:

You don’t necessarily need more food. You need more height.

Instead of spreading everything flat across the table, use cake stands, pedestal plates and serving boards to create different levels.

Put the largest cake toward the back or center. Raise another dessert slightly lower beside it. Then fill the lowest level with cookies and cupcakes.

Even a small collection of desserts suddenly looks much more impressive.

(and my #1 rule… add fresh flowers!)

And your stands don’t have to match.

Mixing white, black, glass and wood cake stands can actually make the table feel more collected and less staged.

5 Ideas to Steal From This Halloween Dessert Table

You don’t have to recreate the entire table. Pick one idea and make it your own.

1. Pipe tiny ghosts around a cake.
Probably the easiest way to turn a simple frosted cake into a Halloween cake.

2. Decorate one dessert really elaborately and keep everything else simple.
Let your statement cake do the work.

3. Turn your favorite cake into an icon cake.
Pumpkins, ghosts, candy, bats, spiders…the possibilities are endless.

4. Use sugar cookies as both dessert and decoration.
They add color and Halloween shapes anywhere the table feels empty.

5. Mix Halloween colors with unexpected shades.
Halloween doesn’t have to mean everything is orange and black.

What I Would Make for a Smaller Halloween Party

If I weren’t making a full dessert table, I’d choose the pumpkin ghost cake, Halloween sugar cookies and vanilla cupcakes.

That’s it.

You’d have a statement dessert, something fun and decorated, and something familiar that almost everyone likes.

Arrange them at three different heights, scatter a little Halloween candy around the serving pieces and you’ve got a simple Halloween dessert setup without spending two days baking.

Make the Photos Part of Your Party Planning

If you’re still deciding what you want your Halloween party to look like, don’t feel like you have to copy everything exactly.

Save the photos that catch your eye and figure out what you like about them.

Maybe it’s the little piped ghosts.

Maybe it’s the combination of pink, orange and white.

Maybe it’s the way the sugar cookies are arranged around the cake.

Or maybe you just want an excuse to make an entire table of desserts.

That’s allowed too.

A Halloween Dessert Table Doesn’t Have to Be Scary

I think that’s what I love most about this one.

It’s Halloween without being creepy. It’s colorful, playful and filled with desserts that would work just as well for a kids’ Halloween party as they would for a girls’ night or October get-together.

You can go all out and make an entire dessert table or take one tiny detail and add it to a recipe you already love. A piped ghost, a Halloween sugar cookie, a little candy icon.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to make something feel special for the season.

And if nothing else, I hope these photos give you plenty of inspiration for whatever you’re baking this Halloween.

I’d love to see your Halloween dessert table!

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