Freak Out Your Friends This Halloween By Turning Red Velvet Cake Into Realistic Raw Meat

When hosting a Halloween party, one of the highlights is often how gross-looking (but good-tasting) you can make the food. From the classic cup of dirt with worms to spider-covered chocolate chip cookies, there are tons of spooky hors d'oeuvres you can concoct to delight your guests. If you're looking for an incredibly easy but effective option, you can make fake raw meat that's sweet and decadent to eat. All you need is some red velvet cake and a way to grind it up.

The simplest form of this party hack involves taking a whole red velvet cake with icing and mashing it up with your hands until it's the same texture and color throughout. This should be a deep pink or light maroon mixture, depending on how much frosting is included. Then, feed the mashed cake through a meat grinder with an extruder attachment onto a plate or dish. That's all there is to it.

What you'll end up with should look almost exactly like ground beef or minced hamburger meat, but will taste sweet and rich like red velvet cake. You can munch the soft, creamy paste in front of people for a gross-out reaction, or serve it to anyone daring enough to take a bite. This treat can also be used as a horror prop in case you're producing a play or movie in which someone consumes raw meat. Just be aware, the result looks so real it might be hard to convince your friends you haven't turned cannibal.

Red velvet cake is an obvious flavor choice for this spookiest of holidays for two main reasons. First of all, its bold red color looks downright bloody. Secondly, it has a vibrant chocolate and vanilla flavor mix, both of which evoke a candy-like quality. While candy wasn't always the dominant Halloween treat, it certainly is now, so this taste combo works well.

As to why you should pick this for your next party, one advantage is that it's only as difficult as you want it to be. You can opt to make your own red velvet cake from scratch if you want to go the extra mile, use an inexpensive box mix, or just buy one at a grocery store. From there, you only need a meat grinder to make it happen, so the materials and tools required are pretty minimal. You can add a little red food coloring if you need a brighter color or add white coloring to mute the hue. Drizzling a little cherry syrup over the top will give it a gory appearance. When plating, a restaurant supply shop foam tray with cling wrap gives it extra realism.

If you want something with a little more texture without losing that tasty red velvet cake flavor, try including a box of red velvet cake mix when making a batch of Rice Krispies treats. The result is a blood-red, crunchy, and gooey confection that also mimics raw ground beef. Still, the cake version looks more like the real deal. This red velvet cake meat proves the best Halloween treats don't always come in a wrapper.