Spider Web Brownies #Halloween recipe by @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: At our house, while we don’t do a lot to celebrate Halloween, we do take seriously the truth that Halloween treats should be fun, and not too scary to make! That’s the beauty of this recipe. Use your favorite boxed brownie mix – we’re partial to Ghirardelli’s Double Chocolate – and add a little seasonal flair for your ghosts and goblins.

Here’s a few Halloween treats from years past: 

Puff Pastry Rattlers

Spider Deviled Eggs 

Boo Scotti 

Mummy Pizza Puffs 

Veggie Skeleton with Brain Dip

PS: I finally figured out how to embed a PDF of the recipe for easy printing. Scroll down to the 💕 for the link. 

Spider Web Brownies

your favorite brownie mix

4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 large egg yolk

milk to thin filling, if needed

Heat your oven to the temperature recommended for your pan type and size. 

Prepare the brownie recipe as instructed and spread the batter in a greased pan, again using the size recommended for your mix. 

In a small bowl, combine the cream cheese, sugar, and flour. Mix until smooth. Add the egg yolk and mix again until smooth. Spoon mixture into a pastry bag or a small zippered plastic bag, and cut off the very tip of the bag. If your filling appears too thick, use a little milk to thin it. 

Start in the center of your pan and squeeze out a small pool of the cream cheese filling. Use the bag to draw circles around the center pool, about 1" apart. Use a table knife, wetting the tip, to draw filling out from the center pool, across the circles, to the edge of the pan. Repeat, moving around the pan, roughly every 2", to create a web-like pattern. You can use any remaining filling to create spokes where you ran the knife, if you’d like. 

Bake according to package directions, until the brownies just begin to away from the edge of the pan. (Remember that it’s easy to overbake brownies – don’t do it!) The center will rise during baking but sink a bit when the brownies cool. Cool pan on a wire rack before cutting. 

Happy Haunting! 

💕 Click here for a free printable PDF! 

ALL GOD'S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES: A STAGECOACH MARY FIELDS COLLECTION, now available in in paperback and ebook 

Take a step back in time with All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection of historical short mysteries, featuring the Agatha-Award winning "All God's Sparrows" and other stories imagining the life of real-life historical figure Mary Fields, born into slavery in 1832, during the last thirty years of her life, in Montana. Out September 17, 2024 from Beyond the Page Publishing.  

“Finely researched and richly detailed, All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories is a wonderful collection. I loved learning about this fascinating woman . . . and what a character she is! Kudos to Leslie Budewitz for bringing her to life so vividly.” —Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of Crow Mary

Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!

TO ERR IS CUMIN:A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, out now in paper, ebook, and audio)

From the cover: One person’s treasure is another’s trash. . .

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change, running her shop and working with customers eager to spice up their cooking. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.

Pepper soon concludes that the chair and its stash may belong to young Talia Cook, new in town and nowhere to be seen. Boz Bosworth, an unemployed chef Pepper’s tangled with in the past, shows up looking for the young woman, but Pepper refuses to help him search. When Boz is found floating in the Ship Canal, only a few blocks from Talia’s apartment, free furniture no longer seems like such a bargain.

On the hunt for Talia, Pepper discovers a web of connections threatening to ensnare her best customer. The more she probes, the harder it gets to tell who’s part of an unsavory scheme of corruption—and who might be the next victim.

Between her quest for an elusive herb, helping her parents remodel their new house, and setting up the Spice Shop’s first cooking class, Pepper’s got a full plate. Dogged by a sense of obligation to find the rightful owner of the hidden treasure, she keeps on showing up and asking questions.

One mistake, and she could find herself cashing out. . .

Available at Amazon  * Barnes & Noble  * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * And your local booksellers!

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest books are To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, in September 2024. 

A past president of Sisters in Crime and former national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.