Halloween Dessert Centerpiece

You will need:

For meringue: 6 large egg whites, 1 1/2 cups sugar, up to a tablespoon of vanilla.

Cocoa Powder

One "over the door" mirror and foil, or cloth to cover the mirror.

A chocolate cookie recipe adn makings

Gummy worms and other candies like spiders or roaches

Prep:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

Lay out a large piece of butcher paper or freezer paper and draw out a basic skeleton in magic marker. You will be placing parchment paper over the butcher paper and "tracing" over with piped meringue. You may want to make multiples of the ribs, arm bones and leg bones, you will more than likely break a few removing them from the parchment paper.

Cut parchment paper sheets the size of your baking sheets.

You will need to rearrange bone pattern to fit on your baking sheets...

Make the meringue:

Put egg whites and sugar and vanilla in the heatproof bowl of an electric mixer. Set bowl over a pan of simmering water; whisk constantly until sugar is dissolved and mixture feels warm to the touch, about 5 minutes.
Return bowl to mixer, and fit mixer with the whisk attachment. Beat on high speed until very stiff peaks form, about 8 minutes. Transfer meringue to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain round tip, such as a Wilton #1A. Pipe bone shapes tracing over the pattern you laid out previously onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper Bake until crisp throughout, about 1 hour. Let cool completely on a wire rack.

While bones are cooling,

Make some dirt:

Make about two full cookie sheets of chocolate cookie, roll out the cookie dough like a pie crust to cover the entire baking sheet. Bake the cookies completely dry- Once the cookies are baked, and cooled, crumble the cookies to make graveyard dirt.

Put it all together:

We lined an "over the door" mirror to use as a serving tray, cover with dirt, arrange the bones. Dust the bones with a little cocoa powder to add some age and detail. Add some gummy worms and spiders and there it is.

The skull:

You can make a skull with meringue, but we used a skull form baking pan and baked a vanilla cake. Finish the cake in powdered sugar and use cocoa powder for the eye sockets and other detail. For an extra measure of fun, mix strawberry (or raspberry) jam with vanilla pudding and fill the skull...