Haunted Chocolate Spice Houses by Pastry Chef Tracey Oshiro
Gingerbread houses are a fun holiday activity to do with the kids around Christmas time so why not take the same activity into your Halloween celebration?
For my Haunted Chocolate Spice houses, I use the gingerbread house cookie cutter and decorate it with Halloween candy and use chocolate molds to create spooky skulls, tombstones and ghosts. For the roof, I used shredded wheat cereal. The Death by Chocolate Brownie gives the perfect texture and ground to place your haunted house.
Chocolate Spice Cookie Dough
Ingredients:
•10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened slightly
•3/4 cups Granulated Sugar
•1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
•1 egg
•1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour*
•1/3 cup dark cocoa powder
•1/4 teaspoon baking powder
•1 tsp Cinnamon
•1/2 tsp Cardamom
•1/2 tsp Clove
•1/2 tsp Nutmeg
•1/2 teaspoon salt
Procedure:
1. In a large mixing bowl combine butter and sugar. Cream until light and fluffy
2. Mix in vanilla extract and egg.2
3. Whisk together cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and flour. Stir into butter mixture and mix just until incorporated.3
4. Flatten dough into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap or place in a zip top bag. Refrigerate for one hour.4
5. Dust cutting board and rolling pin lightly with flour. Roll half of dough out to about 1/8-inch thickness.
6. Cutout the house using gingerbread cookie cutters. Repeat this process, re-rolling the dough as needed, until you have three of each piece cut out.7
8. At this time, if you want doors or windows in your cookie houses, cut them out of front and side pieces.
9. Place cookie cutouts on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Freeze for 15 minutes.
10. Bake for 12-14 minutes until edges set. If you want glass windows, place some crushed jolly ranchers in your window opening at the last 3 minutes of baking. If you want to give you windows a creepy eerie look, you can place the crushed jolly ranchers in the beginning of your bake time.
Death by Chocolate Brownie
Ingredients:
2 Stick of Unsalted Butter, cut into small squares
6 oz of Unsweetened Chocolate
2 oz of Bittersweet Chocolate
1 tsp. Espresso Powder
4 large Eggs
1 ½ cup of Granulated Sugar
½ cup of Light Brown Sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
¼ tsp Salt
1 Cup All-Purpose Flour
4 oz of Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
2 oz of Milk Chocolate Chips
Procedure:
1. Preheat Oven to 325F. Spray 9X13 pan with nonstick spray and line with parchment paper, leaving a 2 inch overhang.
2. In a double boiler, combine the butter, unsweetened chocolate, bittersweet chocolate and espresso powder. Stir until chocolate and butter is melted.
3. In large bowl, whisk eggs, granulated sugar, light brown sugar, vanilla, and salt until smooth. Scrape down the sides to make sure all the ingredients is combined. Add flour, half at a time and stir until smooth. Stir in the semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips.
4. Pour batter in pan and bake for 28 minutes or until the top is set but still soft, edges are puffed and beginning to pull away from the pan.
5. Transfer pan to wire rack allow to cool to room temperature. Approximately an hour.
Tracey Oshiro is a Pastry Chef Instructor at the Le Gourmet Culinary in Orange, Ca. She specializes in french macarons. Her passion is to learn new cooking techniques across the globe.