Freshly Dug Gravecakes

Easy Halloween recipes are all over the internet, but I'm not interested in easy.  I'm interested in disgusting, gross, and eye-popping treats.  Last week I made some Bloody Eye Halloween Cupcakes that were fairly easy to make (except for the eyebrows), but they didn't taste all that great.  This weekend, I made some graveyard cupcakes (thanks to Zombie Cupcakes by Zilly Rosen) that are probably the tastiest thing I ever pulled out of the oven (next to bacon).

<------------That's supposed to be a zombie hand coming up through a grave.  After my sixth or seventh attempt at fashioning edible zombie parts, I finally settled on this hand and decided 'to hell' with the remaining eleven zombies.  So, in the earth they remain.

While the zombie hands weren't all that easy to make, the cupcakes were simple enough.  And, like I said, the cupcakes alone make this recipe a keeper.  Here's what you need.

Oreo Cookies (10-15)
1 big-ass bag of semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
5 tbsp. butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. sour cream
2 tbsp. water
2 cups heavy cream

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a 12-hole muffin pan with cupcake liners.  Crush Oreos into 1/4 inch pieces.  Place 1 tbsp. into each liner.

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt in one bowl.  Place butter and sugar in a large bowl and mix together (with an electric mixer) until it's fluffy.  Melt 1 3/4 oz. of the chocolate chips and blend it in with the butter and sugar.  Mix in the eggs, vanilla extract, and sour cream.  Add about half of the flour mixture to your wet ingredients and blend.  Add the water and remaining flour mixture.

Using half of the batter mix, divide it up among the twelve cupcakes, covering the Oreo cookies.  Cover the batter with 1 tsp. of chocolate chips.

Now cover the chips with the remaining batter and any cookie pieces you may have left over.  I opted to add the batter and just eat the remaining cookie pieces.  Your call.

Stick it in the oven for about 25 minutes and turn once halfway through.

While that's cooking, it's time to make some mud for your grave.  Remember that big-ass bag of chocolate chips?  If you haven't eaten them all yet, stick 2 3/4 cups of chips into a heatproof bowl.  Bring 2 cups of heavy cream to a boil in a saucepan.  As soon as it starts boiling, pour it into the bowl with the chocolate chips.  Whisk it together until it's smooth.  Add the butter and whisk again.  At this point you have two options.  The recipe I followed said to stick the mixture in the fridge and let it cool.  I opted to just leave it out and spread it on right away.

Once your cupcakes cool off, spread on the mud.  After realizing how time consuming it is to spread the mud on, just dip the cupcake upside down into your bowl of mud.  Crush up some more Oreo cookies into a bowl.  Dip the freshly mudded cupcakes into the cookies to give the appearance of dirt.

If you took the time to make a dozen fondant hands, congratulations, you're a better parent than I.  Shove a toothpick in the hand and mount the cupcakes.  Learn how to make some zombie hands.

Spread a small amount of piping gel on various areas of the hand and sprinkle with cookie crumbs for effect.

Mud comes in many different colors, so do cookies. Try crumbling chocolate chip cookies for dirt too.