Quick Tip: Make Your Halloween Treats Glow in the Dark with Tonic Water

If you're throwing a party for Halloween or making homemade goodies for trick-or-treaters, there's no shortage of spooky foods and drinks you can cook up. But if you want to take it a step further, you can make anything glow under a black light by adding a little tonic water.

Hadley Paul Garland/Flickr

Camber Wilson over on Recipe Snobs was asked to come up with a recipe for glow-in-the-dark cupcakes. After playing around with the frosting a bit, she found that tonic water made white frosting glow, but the effect was diminished when she added food coloring.

To fix that problem, she dipped her frosted cupcakes in a mixture of tonic water, gelatin, and neon food coloring. The gelatin coats the frosting and dries as a glaze, allowing the tonic water to glow.

Camber dipped her cupcakes a total of 4 to 6 times, depending on the color and amount of glow she was going for. Between each dunking, she put them in the freezer for a minute or two to help the gelatin set faster.

Here's what her adorable ghost and spider cupcakes looked like under a black light.

Previous SlideNext Slide

You could use the same method for cookies and other frosted treats, but cupcakes tend to work better since the icing is piled high. For the frosting recipe and more tips, check out Camber's full tutorial.

And if you have leftover tonic water you need to get rid of, be sure to check out these glow-in-the-dark cocktails for inspiration!