Halloween White Chocolate Eyeballs

These Halloween white chocolate eyeballs are perfect if you want to give out homemade, less sugary treats to trick-or-treaters!

Updated September 16, 2019 (Originally posted October 29, 2016)

Sure, they might be more time-consuming than just buying a few bags of candy from the store. But these Halloween eyeballs will taste better, no one will be hopped up on sugar bouncing off the walls, and everyone you give these to will surely be impressed!

How to make Halloween white chocolate eyeballs

Although I call these white chocolate eyeballs, they're mostly made up of sweet potato! I used Japanese purple sweet potatoes because the purple color's more appropriate for Halloween.

I feel like everyone has their own method of boiling potatoes, but I like to start with cold water and when it comes to a boil, turn it down to a simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. If you pierce one with a toothpick or fork and it falls off on its own, you're good to go.

Put your drained sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, and heavy cream into a bowl and mash away. I actually don't own a potato masher so I started with a fork and whipped up the rest with an electric beater.

Japanese sweet potatoes tend to be starchier than American sweet potatoes, so if you choose to use American sweet potatoes you might need to adjust the amount of heavy cream to make sure the mixture isn't too wet to roll into balls.

Take a tablespoonful of the cooled sweet potato mixture and roll it up into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let them chill in the fridge. That's it! Your filling is done and ready to be coated!

If you wanted, you could use more of that purple sweet potato mixture and make bigger eyeballs. I just chose to make them this size because I was going to use them to top these Halloween black sesame cupcakes!

While the sweet potato balls are chilling, temper the white chocolate. I looked at Ecole Chocolat for help.

Dip each sweet potato ball into the tempered white chocolate and let them harden. Once they've hardened completely, you can paint on the details using gel food coloring. I tried using liquid food coloring at first but the surface of the chocolate wouldn't let the liquid through and the color didn't stay on.

Liquid vs Gel food coloring

I used Sky Blue and Leaf Green in Wilton's set of 8 colors for the iris, Pink mixed with some Orange from the same set for the veins (I was missing the jar of Christmas Red for whatever reason), and Black that I bought separately for the pupil and the details on the iris.

I'm actually not a fan of food coloring. That said, I had so much fun painting these Halloween eyeballs! I used to love painting in high school, but hadn't really painted since then, and didn't realize how much I missed it.

If you're looking for more Halloween treats, try these Frankenstein rice krispie treats or Halloween cookies.

Ready to skip Halloween and dive straight into Christmas? Check out these Christmas cookie recipes!