Cassandra Peterson still can’t believe it took this long to get her cookbook made. “I’ve been pitching this damn thing for years,” she says, laughing. “Publishers kept thinking it was just another Halloween cookbook. I’d have to explain—no, it’s not about ghosts and pumpkins. It’s year-round goth entertaining. I’m like the Martha Stewart of the macabre.”
It’s a fair title. As Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Peterson’s been America’s favorite horror hostess for over four decades. The new Elvira’s Cookbook From Hell is full of tongue-in-cheek recipes, black humor, and actual good food — “things people will really eat,” she says. Just maybe with a little Cheese Whiz.
“My mom wasn’t a chef,” she admits. “Everything we had was from a can. I didn’t know vegetables grew in the ground until I was twelve.” One of the recipes in the book — a gooey green bean casserole with Cheese Whiz and crushed potato chips — is lifted straight from her childhood. “She’d put chips and cheese on everything so we’d eat it,” she laughs. “It worked.”
Peterson’s own cooking education came later, in Italy, back when she was in a band that performed Brazilian-style pop songs for European club crowds. “My bandmate’s little Neapolitan mother came on tour and made me learn to cook,” she recalls. “She told me, ‘Cassandra, you’ll never get married if you don’t learn to cook!’ I didn’t even know how to boil water. But she stood over me, wrote everything down, made me do it. I’m so thankful she did.”
The new book is equal parts spooky humor and actual hosting advice. “It’s not just food,” she says. “It’s the goth lifestyle. There are napkin tips, coffin trays, black margaritas—everything for your year-round dark dinner party.” Still, she admits she needed a little guidance. “I’m not Julia Child. Luckily, Kim Laidlaw, who did The Rocky Horror Picture Show Cookbook, helped me structure it. She knew what to say about each recipe. Then I took it and made it Elvira.”
And she really means Elvira. The first draft, she says, sounded too much like Cassandra. “I’d just come off writing my autobiography, so it was all in my own voice. I went back through the whole book and rewrote it as Elvira in one insane week. It hit me that Snoop Dogg’s cookbook works because it sounds exactly like him. I wanted that—Elvira’s humor, her bite.”
Peterson tested every dish herself. “I ate every damn thing,” she laughs. “Even the Goth Wedding Cake—which took up two pages of directions. I’m not a baker, but I am an eater.” She points out that some of the recipes, like “Dead Man’s Meatloaf” and “Poison Toadstools,” have been family favorites for years. “I’d make them for my daughter’s October birthday. She loved cutting open the meatloaf and watching the ketchup ooze out like blood.”
Her favorite is a party snack originally titled White Trash Crack, renamed Trick or Trash for publication. “It’s every terrible cereal—Cap’n Crunch, Trix, Lucky Charms—with nuts and pretzels covered in white chocolate,” she says. “I once took it to a billionaire’s house. They went crazy for it. It’s disgusting and amazing. Just don’t make a habit of it.”
Beyond the kitchen, Peterson’s been busy as ever: a children’s book, new projects for next year, and—maybe—music. When I mention her pair of 45s that she put out on Third Man Records, her face lights up. “You know, Jack White and I have been talking about that,” she teases. “He and I have been friends since Pee-wee Herman introduced us.”
Wait—Pee-wee introduced Elvira to Jack White? “Yeah! He called and said he had tickets for Jack’s show at the Fonda but couldn’t go. My daughter was a huge White Stripes fan, so we went. After the show, Jack walked straight up to me backstage and said, ‘Oh my god, you’re Elvira.’ We’ve been friends ever since. He and Pee-wee used to come see my Halloween shows every year. He’s brilliant—one of the best guitar players since Page and Hendrix.”
Peterson laughs remembering her visit to Detroit. “Third Man there is amazing. I just love him. I tell him all the time—let’s do something together.”
The pairing makes sense: both have a flair for the theatrical, an obsession with black and white, and a taste for the darkly glamorous. “Halloween 365 days a year,” she says proudly. “That’s my quest in life. People think it’s seasonal, but it’s a lifestyle.”
So yes, Elvira’s Cookbook From Hell can sit comfortably next to your regular cookbooks. “I want people to actually use it,” Peterson insists. “Make it weird, make it fun, but make it real. You don’t have to be goth to enjoy it—but it helps.”
Watch the full interview above and then check out the video below.
