Graveyard Halloween Brownies

These brownies were a hit with my kids...and really  how could they not be?? Brownies, icing, cookies, and green candy all in one dessert equals kid nirvana! 

The only special equipment you'll need is the skeleton candy mould. The one I used is made by Wilton and I bought it at Michael's craft store. The skeletons are easy to make - you just melt the candy, pour it in the mould and let set. I made them in both green and white but the kids liked the green ones better so we used them in the graveyard (and ate the white ones while we worked - i.e. I worked and they watched...and ate :)

The gravestones are also easy to make! I just used store bought chocolate wafers and cut off a little of one end. I iced them with some store bought icing that I had tinted grey with just a smidge of black food colour gel. 

Ingredients 

1 tub white icing (3/4 c)
1 tub chocolate icing (or approximately 1-1/2 c)
1 sleeve chocolate wafers (9 oz/255g)
1 bag green candy melts
black food colouring

For brownies

Ingredients
1-1/2 c butter, unsalted
2-1/4 c sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 c flour
1 c cocoa
1/2 tsp salt

What to do

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan. This is important because you'll want to remove the brownies from the pan in one piece.
• Over low heat, melt butter in a saucepan.
• Add sugar and stir until well combined and some sugar dissolves. It will still be thick and 'sugary' looking.
• Cool the mixture to room temperature.
• Place in large mixing bowl.
• Add eggs one at a time and beat until well combined- about 4 minutes.
• In another bowl, sift together.
• Add dry ingredients to butter mixture and stir until just combined.
• Pour batter into pan and smooth with spatula.
• Bake for 30-35 minutes.
• Don't over bake!
• Cool completely before moving on.

Candy Skeletons
You'll need the mould and a bag of green candy melts. Follow directions for melting the candy and moulds that are on the packages. Make 2 sets of skeletons (i.e. 4 skeletons)

Putting the graveyard together
Gently release the cooled brownies from the pan and place on your serving platter or tray. Frost the brownies with your chocolate icing - this doesn't have to look perfect because you are going to cover it up!

Put aside 11 whole cookie wafers. Put the rest in a Ziploc bag and crush them into crumbs with a rolling pin (my 6 yr old son used a hammer from his tool kit - who says baking isn't masculine???!). Sprinkle the crumbs over the iced brownies.

Using a sharp knife, cut off about 1/2 inch or 1 cm of the ends of the wafer cookie so it resembles a grave stone. You won't need all 11 cookies but you'll want to have a few extras just in case the cookie crumbles!

Tint 1/2 c white icing gray by adding a couple drops of black food colouring. Then use a small spatula to cover the fronts of the headstones with the gray icing. If desired, use some of the left over white icing to write on your gravestones!

Place two headstones on the back row of your graveyard. Gently press them into the chocolate icing to secure. Then place some skeleton pieces in from each headstone. (The entire skeleton is quite big so you will probably just use part of one per grave). Squish some of the "bones" into the crumbs to make it look like they are coming out of the earth. 

Repeat with remaining headstones and skeleton pieces.

Boo-tiful, right?

Happy Halloween!