Instructions

The Cookies

1. Add the butter and the sugar to a medium sized bowl and either using an electric mixer or a just a rubber spatula cream the 2 together for about 2 minutes until fluffy.
2. Add in the eggs and heavy cream and beat until combined.
3. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until you get a slightly sticky dough. Split the dough in half and then split one of those halves in half so you have 1 bigger portion and 2 smaller.
4. With the bigger portion, knead in some brown food coloring until it is an even brown color all around. Do the same with white portion.
5. With the gray portion just knead in some black food coloring, enough to get a gray color( try to marble in the coloring and not make it one color because tombstones aren't 1 tone of gray). Then rip off a small portion of that dough and knead in a little more black food coloring to get a black color.
6. Wrap all of these doughs in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge for 30 minutes.

The Cake

1. While that's happening, Prepare a 9x13 inch baking pan by spraying with nonstick spray and preheat the oven to whatever temperture recommended on your boxed cake mix.
2. Add 1 more egg than recommended in directions, butter instead of oil and milk instead of water, Mix in the cake mix and pour into the prepared pan. Bake for however long it recommends.
3. When it comes out of the oven, cool completely and rip the cake into crumbs or put in the food processor.

Bake the Cookies

1. Take the dough out of the fridge and let it warm up a little at room temperture for 5 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350•.
2. Roll out each dough amd cut out your shapes: 1 Black Cat and 1 coffin with the Black, 6 tombstones out of the gray dough, 6 ghosts out of the white dough and 4 fences and a tree out of the brown dough. ( All of the cookie cutter and templates linked above.)
3. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.
4. Let cool completely

Instant Pudding

1. While you wait for your cookies to cool, prepare the instant pudding to package directions.
2. Cover and put in the fridge.

Glaze Icing (That's How I Cookie Coach)

1. Add in the confectioners sugar, corn syrup, milk, vanilla extract and white food coloring in a large bowl or kitchen aid with a paddle attachment and mix all this up until evenly combined.
2. To start you are looking for a flood icing consistancy. Pick some icing up with a spoon and let it drizzle back into the bowl. Count how long it takes for the icing drizzle to melt back into the rest of the icing so that you don't see the streak anymore.. For flood icing, it should take 3-5 seconds. If it's too thin, add more confectioners sugar. If it's too thick, add more milk.
3. Once you have the consistancy right, add half of this to a separate bowl.
4. With the amount that is remaining, add in confectioners sugar until you get a consistancy that melts back into the rest of the icing in 10 seconds. This is the border icing.
5. Cut that amount of icing in half and dye one amount black and one scoop of it green.
6. Add all these frostings to piping bags.

Decorating Cookies

1. Starting with the ghosts, outline the cookie with the border icing. Let that set for 5 minutes and then pipe the flood icing all over the cookie within the border. Use a toothpick to smooth out the icing and fill in any spaces.
2. For the cat, pipe 2 small green eyes. and with the black write "RIP" on the tombstones and the coffin. and give the ghosts some eyes with the black too.

Oreo Dirt

1. Start by scraping all the cream filling out of each oreo. You won't need it again for this recipe so you can discard it if you wish.
2. Place the cookies into a large ziplock bag and crush them up with a rolling pin until you get crumbs.
3. Set Aside

Putting Together the Graveyard

1. In a large bowl, mix together the cake crumbs and the pudding until evenly combined. You want the cake crumbs to be moistened but not too wet. Think dirt after it drizzled outside, not downpoured.
2. Scatter this mixture into a large cassarole dish. Spread out as even as you can manage. It it is a little uneven, that's ok because this is the ground a grave yard which isn't totally even anyway.
3. Place the tombstones in first: starting to the bottem right corner 3 in a row and then 3 behind that. Then place the ghosts whereever you want. I only ended up placing 3 in my grave yard but you can put as many or as little as you like. Place the black cat where ever you want but I put him in the left bottem corner. Place the tree behind the top left corner tombstone. This way it can lean against the back wall and not look like it is. Make a pumpkin patch by squaring off a spot on the right side with the fences. Add oreo crumbs in the square and add some gummy pumpkins on top. Place a mound of oreo dirt infront of each tombstone and you are done!