the queen of halloween: MONSTER BROWNIES!

I have to tell you...I wish I could take credit for all these amazing ideas that I share with you all....but I CAN'T! I trudge through the world-wide-internet jungle to find the coolest Halloween stuff, I can....so I can show all of you! And one of my favorite sites is Amanda's Cookin'! She's amazing!

She has step-by-step instructions for these Monster Brownies, and she makes it look sooooo easy, you're gonna wanna try it! Take it away, Amanda......

I give you Brownie Monster Treats! Because decorating these treats can be time consuming, I chose to use a boxed brownie mix. You can certainly use your favorite recipe or do the same. I used three cereals: Trix, Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs. To make things easier on myself and to make this kid friendly, I also used Betty Crocker decorating cookie icing. Pretty cool stuff, Royal Icing in a bag! They sell all the colors I needed, but my rinky dink grocery store only had red, green and white, so I used some gel food coloring to get what I wanted. The icing from the bag dried much smoother, so I would definitely recommend buying the colors you want over mixing it yourself.

Here's something fun too. Because this is Royal icing, that means the frosting is dry (unless you use the gel like I did, that never dries LOL) so you can package them in cellophane gift baggies. While you are at it, be sure to make some bread tag monsters to close the treat bags with!

Here's what you'll need:
Boxed brownie mix
Betty Crocker Cookie Icing in desired colors
Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs, and Trix cereals
Mini chocolate chips
Pretzel sticks
Red and black decorator gel
1/4 cup powdered sugar
milk

First prepare your brownies and allow them to cool. I refrigerated mine so that I could get nice clean cuts. When your brownies are ready to be cut, cut off the edges and eat them :) (you could share too, just sayin') and cut the brownies into different sized rectangles and squares. I cut some of the odd shaped leftovers into triangles too.

Make the Eyes

It's important to do this step first to allow adequate time for the glaze to dry. To make the eyes you'll need any variety of Cheerios, some mini chocolate chips, powdered sugar and a little milk. Place the powdered sugar into a small bowl. Using a spoon, stir in some milk, a little bit at a time, until the consistency is good enough for dipping. Start with about a teaspoon and add a couple drops at a time until you get it where you want it.

Drop a few Cheerios into the glaze coating the cereal. Use a spoon to lift the cereal out of the glaze and place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet

Place a mini chocolate chip, upside down, in the center of each glazed Cheerio. Gently press the mini chip to set. Set aside.

Icing Colors

You could certainly use your own recipe for Royal icing, I have one myself as well. However, because this is such a great recipe for kids to get involved in, using these prepackaged icings is an excellent alternative. They are available in all of the colors that I used by my store only had a few. Therefore, I added some gel food coloring to mix up my colors. This icing is great, squeezes right out of the tube and onto the brownie, love it!

If you have to mix, like I did, you might find the easiest way to apply the mixed icing is with a new paintbrush.

Decorating

Gently press Trix and Cocoa Puffs cereals into the frosted brownies for the monsters' polka dots. Lift the eyes from the waxed paper using a toothpick and gently press onto the frosted brownie. You can use pretzel sticks for arms and legs, and add eyebrows, mouths and hair using decorator gel.