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This year for Halloween we are going to be hosting a come and go type party for all of our friends. I want it to be casual and for people to feel welcome to stay as long as they like. Food wise I want to serve something that appeals to just about everyone and what better way to do that then to serve pizza and cookie cake. I also want to be inclusive of other cultures by bringing in a little Dia De Los Muertos theme along with our Halloween decor. In this post I will show you how I make a Dia De Los Muertos Candy Cookie Cake… shhhh don’t tell my kids that I already used some Halloween candy to make this!!
This cookie cake will have a few unexpected surprises in it that I picked up from HEB including NESTLÉ® NESQUIK® powder drink mix in Chocolate and Strawberry, NERDS® Fun Size Candy in Strawberry, NESTLÉ® BUTTERFINGER® and CRUNCH® Bars!!! Yep all of that is included in this candy filled cookie cake that is sure to please those chocolate lovers as well as your fruity lovers.
To make the cookie dough base I used the recipe on the back of the NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Morsels bag. I mean why complicate things 🙂 Then I divided the dough in half and put it in to separate bowls. In one bowl I added 1/4 cup of NESTLÉ® NESQUIK® Strawberry. The other bowl got a 1/4 cup of the Chocolate. I then added in 4 fun size boxes of NERDS® Fun Size Candy Strawberry to the strawberry dough. For the chocolate dough, I added in 3 each of NESTLÉ® BUTTERFINGER® and CRUNCH®, chopped. Mix in the powder and candies into the dough then spread the dough evenly in a sheet pan. You will want the doughs to connect so that they bake as one cookie cake.
While the cookie cake is baking, mix up your favorite frosting recipe. I usually do 2 sticks of butter to one bag of powdered sugar. I think it is a 2 lb bag. I add in 2 tsp of vanilla and about 1/4 cup heavy cream. The heavy cream part will vary so start with a small amount then add more to make the frosting the consistency that you like. Spoon out about 1/2 cup of the frosting into two bowls. Color one bowl in whatever color you would like your flowers to be, and one bowl to be black. I went with red for the flowers, but really you can do any color.
Once the candy cookie cake is cooled, flip it onto a cake board or just leave it in the pan, frost the whole cookie cake in the white frosting in an even layer. I then let mine sit overnight to harden, but you really don’t have to you can pipe on the design immediately. To make the skull as is typical in most Dia De Los Muertos themes, I took a knife and made a thin outline. I am not the best at drawing so this helped give me a reference point of how to pipe out the skull. The beauty of the white icing is that you can smooth it over it you don’t like the outline that you made. I then took the black frosting and put a tip that was a medium size line to trace the outside of the skull. Then I piped in the black dots for the center of the eyes and flowers as well as the upside down heart shaped nose and hatch pattern mouth. This is definitely a more simplistic skull, but if you have that artistic eye then go ahead and decorate your skull more. I referenced pictures online to form mine.
Next I piped on the flowers around the eyes as well as flowers in the four corners of the cookie cake to fill in the extra space. Around the outside of the cookie cake I used flower shaped sprinkles to give it a fun border. I picked up some Dia De Los Muertos themed decorations as well as a TOMBSTONE® Original Pepperoni Pizza with a fun Halloween packaging while I was at HEB and they all go so nicely together. I cut the pizza so people could have a few bites while at the party then grab some candy cookie cake and head out to trick or treat.
How do you incorporate other cultures in your holiday celebrations?
- Look for a demo at your nearest HEB store, check out the list for locations and dates HERE. They will be sampling Pumpkin Cookie Butter dip with LIBBY’S 100% Pure Pumpkin and HEB Speculoos Creamy Cookie Butter!
Ingredients
- Plain Cookie Dough
- 1/4 NESTLÉ® NESQUIK® powder, Chocolate and Strawberry
- 4 NERDS® Fun Size Candy, Strawberry
- 4 each, NESTLÉ® BUTTERFINGER® and NESTLÉ® CRUNCH® fun size bars, chopped
- 4 cups frosting(homemade or tubs)
- Red and Black food coloring
- Flower sprinkles
Instructions
- Mix up a batch of cookie dough. I use the NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® recipe on the back of the bag.
- Divide dough in half. Add 1/4 cup of NESTLÉ® NESQUIK® Chocolate powder to one half of the dough. Add NESTLÉ® NESQUIK® Strawberry powder to the other half of the dough
- Bake for 20 minutes at $375. It may take longer depending upon the pan you use and how thick you spread the dough.
- After candy cookie cake cools, ice with the white frosting. Decorate with skull and flower sprinkles.
Yum.
This cookie cake looks delicious!! Thanks #client
My kids sure loved it!