How Cassandra Peterson turned Elvira into Martha Stewart of the Macabre

Out: When I first heard about Elvira's Cookbook From Hell, that Pot Monster scene from Elvira: Mistress of the Dark where you think Aunt Morgana's spellbook is actually a cookbook immediately sprung to mind. Is it safe to say that served as inspiration for this project?

Elvira: I have been thinking of doing this book way longer than my autobiography, which was on and off for 10 years until I had a deadline, and then I really cranked. But I have wanted to do this cookbook for maybe 30 or 35 years. I used to entertain and have a lot of dinner parties all the time. I enjoy cooking. And I had a lot of funny little bits on Movie Macabre where I would do fake little cooking segments. So I started calling myself the Martha Stewart of the Macabre.

I was a big fan of Martha Stewart — I still am! — and I thought, 'I could be Martha Stewart for the goth crowd. Why not?' And you have a book where you show them how to set their table and decorate it and have recipes for the goth crowd, not necessarily just on Halloween — Halloween is 365 days a year. And that's what I was trying to do. Yeah, and I can call myself the Martha Stewart of the Macabre if she can call herself the Queen of Halloween, which is on the cover of her magazine this month.

When I got my copy, the first thing I did was flick through to see if there was a recipe for "Adraka Kozarole" from the movie. So if I make this and get an ingredient wrong, is my Halloween party going to turn into a big orgy?

It is, yes! It seems like it's only a green bean casserole, but it's actually going to make you really horny. [Laughs]

Clearly that scene inspired this recipe, so how did you decide what to put in it?

Well, I came up with it in a pretty wacky way. It was a recipe from my childhood, believe it or not. It was this green bean casserole that my family used to serve at Thanksgiving. And it didn't have the potato chips and the Cheez Whiz on it. But that was one of my mom's favorite things to do with everything. I think it would get us to eat it. My mom was not a great cook. It was usually a can of green beans or something thrown together. And then, crushing up the potato chips, and then a little Cheese Whiz on top. And that's how you'd get kids to eat the food back then when I was growing up. So that recipe, and even the pan that I used, is actually from my mother. So it's kind of a nostalgic recipe for me.

Out of all the recipes in this book, is there a favorite or two you usually recommend off the bat?

These are both so unhealthy. It's called Green Slime Totchos. But it's tater tots, which, come on, tater tots? You put pico de gallo on it, and then you have a guacamole sauce to dip them in. They're so freaking good to me and none of the crew could stop eating them. And then there's this other thing that sounds ridiculous, but I got this from my cousins, and this is a thing that they've been doing for years and years.

I used to call it White Trash Crack, but we changed the name to Trick or Trash. It's like all the worst cereal you could possibly buy: Cap'n Crunch, Trix, Lucky Charms. And then you put in some peanuts and some broken-up pretzels. And then you cover the whole thing with white chocolate. Like, anybody can make this because you don't have to cook it. You just put it on a tray, cover it in white chocolate. And it is irresistible to people. I'm not kidding! People can't stop eating that crap, and you only eat it like once a year because it's really not very healthy.

I know you're a vegetarian, but it seems you've made this book inclusive with meat and vegan recipes. It's like you wanted to make a cookbook for everybody, regardless of diet or personal belief.

That is exactly it. That was a really hard decision. I would have rather made it vegetarian. I would have rather gone that way. But when you do that, you cut out a huge section of the fan base. So we tried to do it. It was really not easy. Almost everything has a vegan and or vegetarian alternative.

You know, you're selling a book. You want all the people you can get. And I know that I have a few fans who were dismayed that it has meat in there, but it's like, then don't make that recipe. I'm not trying to sell meat. I'm just saying, eat what you want to, you know? I'd rather not eat much meat. And I think people are getting better with that. It's not good for your health. It's not good for the animals.

I loved the mixture of classic Elvira photos featured in the book. You don't dress up as the character anymore these days, but there seems to be a lot of new photos of a headless Elvira posing with food. Is that you?

Yeah, well, the nice thing is it was me because of the magic of Photoshop. And I wouldn't go running around, making live appearances at the age of 74 as Elvira because nobody wants to see that. But with these photos, I could do it because everything could be tweaked. And yeah, so that worked out for me. We did mostly keep my face out of it. And it's still good.

Between 2021 and now, you've released three books: your memoirs, a children's book and now this cookbook. Is it safe to say you've been bitten by the writer's bug and have embraced this new author era of Cassandra Peterson?

I did my autobiography, of course, and then I got offered to do another book. So I was thrilled to be able to finally do this cookbook. And then that kids book just came out of nowhere with Running Press. They just came to me and asked me if I'd like to do it. And it was so darn simple for me.

They had the artist who I loved and they had the basic concept: making all the classic monsters palatable and friendly for children. So it's not a spooky book in any way. It's a board book. And all I had to do was write it in poem form. It was so quick and easy that I just said, "Sure, why not?" So I didn't mean to gang up all my books at once, but that's kind of what happened.

Elvira is such a risqué, sexually charged character known for her adult humor. Did you find it challenging to tone the character down and avoid using the classic Elvira schtick?

When they first pitched it to me, my very first reaction was, 'Elvira doing a kid's book? What?!' But they also talked about how they had done a board book with like, I think it was David Bowie, Tina Turner. It was like word books. And then I thought, OK, well, if they can do it, we can make it palatable for children. So it kind of changed my mind about that. And I honestly think the people that are going to buy it more are going to be the parents of children or a friend buying it because they're into the character, but I was very, very adamant about making it very, very child-friendly. No funny right turns or anything like that.

You are going to be sorely missed at Knott's Scary Farm this Halloween season, but Los Angeles fans are at least getting some Elvira attractions at Haunted Hayride this year. Can you talk about that?

I would have loved to continue with Knott's. I had such a long relationship with them, but they weren't really all in on continuing Elvira not doing the live shows anymore, which I did for like 31 years, and now I'm like, I'm done!. But I would have liked to have sort of gone on. They were wonderful. I loved doing the shows there. But then I was offered a situation with Thirteenth Floor Entertainment, who owns the Haunted Hayride, and many, many venues across the United States and they do pop-up stores everywhere with horror merchandise and they're putting my image in a lot of their rides, so it just was kind of a nice transition to go that way — and they're great.

I was a big fan of your memoirs, Yours Cruelly, Elvira, and I remember you once said there were so many stories that couldn't fit into those 300 pages. Is there a chance we might get a second volume with more juicy stories from your life?

It's so funny. I'm always telling my manager stories. I'll just remember something and tell him, and he'll go, 'That wasn't in your book!' And then I'll say something else, 'That wasn't in your book!' Honestly, he was saying to me, 'You gotta write all this stuff down!' And this will be the book I write, and it comes out right before I croak, because there's a lot of stories in there that I couldn't— Yeah, they're kind of racy. I mean, not that my book wasn't racy already, right? But there were some [stories] where it was just like, 'OK, this is over the top,' if you can believe that or not. I just saw Charlie Sheen talking about his book. I'm going, 'Mine's pretty tame compared to that!'

When Yours Cruelly came out in 2021, the revelation about your same-sex relationship probably made the biggest headlines. It's been four years now, the dust has settled. And, clearly, your career didn't implode, you still have all these new book deals and other projects going on. Now that you've lived through that, what's your advice to celebrities from your era who might be struggling to come out with a secret they fear could be a career-killer?

I hope I set a good pathway for them. I hope that they can take from that, that it won't be the end of their career. And I think it definitely is more open and easier to do it now. One of my dear friends, Richard Chamberlain, came out and that was the end of his career. He never got another leading-man role ever again, and I think he came out in the '80s, and it was bad back then, and it worried me a lot.

I'm like, 'Am I willing to risk [the] rest of my career for coming out?' You just don't know what's going to happen. I think it's easier for people now, although with the current political climate… Pretty scary. But I hope that I set an example for younger actors. And I've got to tell you, it's such a relief. Keeping secrets is not a good thing. Any secret makes you feel bad, makes your partner feel bad, and it gives you gas. [Laughs] So, yeah, it's just not good to hold those kinds of secrets for your own well-being. But there are situations where people said that they could lose their job. I understand that. Just have a back-up plan, just in case.

Are there any other projects you could tease? Is it possible we might get an animated Elvira movie or any live-action projects?

There is a possibility; it's coming up. It's going to be out in 2026, but I'm not allowed to talk about it yet. But there is a really cool project I'm looking forward to, a film project.

Elvira's Cookbook from Hell is available on September 30 from Hachette Book Group. Experience Elvira's Trick or Treat Mayhem at Los Angeles Haunted Hayride.