Happy Halloween, everyone! What are y’all doing for the spookiest holiday of the year? Trick-or-treating with the kids? Egging the neighbors’ houses? Going to fabulous costume parties? All of the above? Sounds like fun!
Our plans this weekend not so Halloween-y. Instead of throwing on costumes and heading out to the bars, waiting around at home hoping for bite-sized trick or treaters, and/or eating our body weight in candy, we’re headed out to a cabin in the boonies of VA with two other couples. Yup. We rented a cabin in the woods. On Halloween weekend. If you don’t hear from me after today, it’s probably safe to assume that a masked, chain-saw wielding madman got to me.
Before that madman gets me though, I’ve got big plans for the weekend – cocktail night, lots of wine, Jurassic Park drinking game, Game of Thrones board game, Taboo, grilling, corn hole, hot tubbing, kayaking/hiking (if it doesn’t rain/snow), and a whole bunch of napping. It’s going to be so much fun!
The only thing that could make this weekend better is if our cabin got trick-or-treaters tonight. Love love love small children in costumes. Sadly, we probably won’t see any – I think parents tend not to let their kids wander up to remote cabins in the middle of the woods at night. Big time bummer.
Anyway. Back to today’s recipe. Continuing my tradition of low-budget, low-fuss, kid-friendly Halloween treats, I give you this Graveyard Pie. The recipe is inspired by my friend Melissa’s post a few year’s back. I remember seeing it and thinking that it was the cutest thing ever. Real graves, not cute. Cookie graves, super cute!
And did I mention that this is the easiest recipe ever? It’s just a graham cracker crust (the only baking you’ll have to do), filled with creamy whipped Nutella filling, covered in oreo cookie “dirt”, and decorated with Milano cookie “graves”. Spooktacularly (heh heh) easy, and delicious!
Happy Halloween!!!
- 9 graham crackers
- ½ cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 8 oz Cool Whip (or, use fresh whipped cream if you want to get fancy)
- 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
- ⅔ cup Nutella
- 12 oreo cookies or chocolate wafers
- Milano cookies
- Cookie writers or candy gels (to decorate the cookies)
- Preheat the oven to 325F.
- Place graham crackers in a gallon ziplock bag, and crush them with a rolling pin (you can also do this in a food processor) until they are finely ground. You should get roughly 2 cups of crumbs.
- Pour graham cracker crumbs into a bowl. Add butter and stir until well incorporated - your crumbs should look sort of wet.
- Gently but firmly press the graham cracker mixture firmly into a 9-inch pie plate, along the bottom and sides.
- Bake for 20 minutes until your crust set.
- Set crust aside to cool for 30-45 minutes.
- In a separate bowl, stir together Cool Whip and softened cream cheese until well mixed.
- Add Nutella and stir until mixture is perfectly uniform.
- Chill pie in the fridge while you make your "dirt."
- Finely process or crush (same ziplock/rolling pin method) your chocolate wafers. If you're using oreos, like I did, just twist the cookie open, scrape off the filling (eat it, obvi), and toss the two cookie halves into your bag/processor.
- To make the tombstones, cut the milano cookies in half and decorate it with your candy writers/gels however you want!
- Spoon creamy Nutella filling into your cooled crust, and spread it evenly across the crust.
- Sprinkle/spread the crushed cookie "dirt" evenly on the top of the pie.
- Place your cookie "tombstones" cut side down into the dirt.
- Eat your scary treat immediately, or store in the fridge until you're ready to eat.
I’m a little late for this year’s Halloween, but I love the idea of personalizing the graveyard with people’s names! Halloween kinda snuck up on me this year (don’t ask how that’s possible, considering it’s the same date every year) so I didn’t do anything, but I usually throw a party and I’ll keep this in mind for next year!
I DID hear from you when you got back so I’m quite relieved that you survived your Blair Witch weekend! Your pie is just too cute, girl! Did you bring it up to the cabin in the woods?!
I didn’t! Too much other crap to carry (food, mainly). But Dan and I have been devouring it all week 😀