Elvira on Her New Cookbook and Why She Doesn’t Dress Up as the Character (Exclusive)

Cassandra Peterson, a.k.a. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, is emerging from the shadows and stepping into the kitchen. 

Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell, available Tuesday, Sept. 30, features crafts, hosting tips and recipes that embody the star’s irreverent and campy style. 

“For years and years and years, I had wanted to do this, more of an entertaining guide for the goth crowd. Not so much Halloween specific, because as I’m sure you’re aware, there are a billion Halloween cookbooks out there,” Peterson, 73, tells PEOPLE.

“Most of the Halloween cookbooks and things of that genre are geared more towards kids, which is great. But I wanted this to be more of an adult party time — so things like a romantic graveside picnic and things that a goth-geared person would be interested in,” she continues.

With whimsical recipes like Spook-Ghetti and Eyeballs (pasta featuring meatballs decorated with mozzarella and black olives), Guaca-Morbid (guacamole spewing out of a jack-o-lantern’s frowning face) and Sausage Guts (ground meat molded into an intestine-like swirl), the book has plenty to offer anyone who wants to throw a party that’s anything but ordinary.

But deciding which treats would make it in the final version required a fair amount of (witch) trial and error. 

“Oh my God, we had so many different recipes that bit the dust before the book,” says Peterson, who developed the Elvira persona more than four decades ago when she hosted the syndicated series Elvira’s Movie Macabre. 

“We just couldn’t make them work. And we did want to make everything fairly easy for people to cook. We didn’t want to have to be like, you have to be Julia Child to make this stuff,” adds the alum of comedy troupe The Groundlings.

The cookbook even has a callback to her 1988 cult classic movie Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, in which she whips up something called Adraka Kozarole. “People always wondered what it was, what was in it,” says Peterson. “It’s actually a little bit inspired by my childhood. My mom wasn’t, what I would say, a fantastic cook. She usually topped mostly everything with crunched potato chips and Cheese Whiz. It’s basically a green bean casserole that I had as a kid for Thanksgiving.”

Peterson says her longtime partner Teresa “T” Wierson was her reluctant taste-tester. “A lot of things weren’t really up her alley,” says Peterson. “She eats so insanely clean. She’s quite athletic. She kind of eats salad for breakfast, lunch, dinner.”

Though the cookbook features several images of Peterson dressed as Elvira — towering black wig, tight-fitting and low-cut ensemble, full face of make-up — the Kansas native doesn’t often get into costume anymore.

“I kind of cut it off. There gets to a point where nobody’s going to want to see a really old Elvira,” she says.

When fans ask her why she stopped, “I go, ‘Well, two big reasons that are really a lot lower these days,’” she quips. 

“I mean, there comes a point when you want to get out at the top of your game like Muhammad Ali. Don’t just keep going until people are going, ‘Oh, that poor woman,” says Peterson. “I don’t want to run her into the ground. But yeah, nobody wants to see an 80-year-old Elvira.”

Besides, dressing up “gets old after the hundred millionth time of doing it, I’ll tell you,” she adds. “Ask any drag queen.”

These days, she gets clocked by fans when she’s not in character, which is a relatively new phenomenon for her. 

“I had 30, 35 good years where nobody recognized me. It was awesome. I could go anywhere in L.A. where they’re very focused on seeing celebrities. I gave that all up when I sort of did my autobiography and when I began appearing at conventions as Cassandra. Before, I was always Elvira,” says Peterson, who released the memoir Yours Cruelly, Elvira, in 2021.

“Once I let the cat out the bag, that was the end of that. So yeah, people recognize me everywhere I go, nonstop. And it’s something I’m really having to get used to. I just never had to deal with that,” she says.

“I had a funny thing happen where I had a picture of me at the airport appear in a magazine, and that had never happened. And then the next thing I know, a girl appears at one of my conventions dressed as me at the airport,” says Peterson. “She’s wearing my exact outfit.”

Whether she’s in or out of character, one thing remains a constant, though — the quote from her 1988 movie that fans ask her to recite.

“People come up to me and say, ‘Hey, could you just say one thing to me: How’s your head?’”

Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell comes out Tuesday, Sept. 30 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.