Healthy Halloween Snacks: Ghost String Cheese and Pumpkin Mandarins

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Healthy Halloween Snack Ideas

Looking for some spook-tacular non-candy treats to offer the kids this Halloween season? We love candy as much as the next person, but I still try to offer healthy snack alternatives when possible. The kids love them, too!

Halloween is such a fun season when it comes to losing yourself in the holiday theme as far as snacks and home decor goes. From the orange and black color schemes to featuring ghosts, goblins, witches and jack o’lanterns in all sorts of decorations, it’s a great time of year! Between both of the kids’ schools, our community, and the various extracurricular activities the kids are involved in, we have plenty of fall events to attend. There are fall fests, Halloween parties, pumpkin carving contests and more. We bring treats and snacks to many of these occasions. My usual go-to dish for a fall themed event (including Friendsgiving) is our easy pumpkin dip. So tasty!

So how about all of those snack opportunities when you have to send food to preschool or supply a snack for the elementary school’s Halloween party? I know that the first food we think of when it comes to Halloween is candy, but healthy alternatives are super easy to come up with. They are so many budget friendly snack ideas and a lot of them are easy to put a festive Halloween spin on.

Healthy Snack Ingredients

You only need 3 things to make these snacks: mandarins, individually packaged string cheese, and a black permanent marker

Mandarin Jack O’Lanterns

Call them mandarins or clementines or baby oranges, we love these things! They are so sweet, juicy and delicious. They also happen to be round, orange foods that lend themselves perfectly to Jack ‘O Lanterns. Take a black permanent marker and draw a funny face on each one. I typically use triangles for the eyes and noses, then alternate the mouth shapes.

Ghost String Cheese

We used mozzarella string cheese, but you can use any variety as long as it’s individually packaged. Use the black marker to make a “ghost” face by drawing two small side by side ovals and one longer oval centered underneath the first two.

Now that’s some spooooooky cheese!

The end result? Some totally cute, totally festive seasonal snacks, that WON’T put the kids into an instant sugar coma. Like I said, I’m a big fan of candy. I also know how the candy flows into our home at every turn during this time of year. It’s nice to have some snacks on hand that don’t contribute to the influx of sugar!