These super easy and fun all natural Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies are sure to be everyone’s favorite Halloween dessert! With completely vegan ingredients, these Halloween brownies are fit for a Sanderson sister!
My favorite vegan Halloween brownies
Every Halloween since I first saw Hocus Pocus (I think around the age of 7), I watch the movie at least 20 times. I’m not even joking.
I’m a hardcore Hocus Pocus fan. I even went as Sarah one year for Halloween, along with two of my other friends. Not to mention, I know every line of the whole movie (if they ever make a remake, I’m available ha!).
So naturally, I wanted to celebrate my favorite movie in style with Hocus Pocus Spellbook brownies! These vegan Halloween brownies are the all-natural version of the Pinterest favorite.
What people may not know is that colored vegan icings, especially black icings or red, are really hard to come by (since many colors are indeed not vegan!), so instead of going out and searching for activated charcoal, I decided let’s keep this simple.
I want these Halloween spell book brownies to be accessible to all, and let’s be honest, not many people (myself included), have a bunch of superfood vibrantly colored powders lying around in our cabinets.
So these vegan Hocus Pocus brownies are all chocolate and simple vegan frosting. Rest assured, you and your kids can enjoy these brownies knowing they’re completely natural!
What to use for vegan food coloring
For this Halloween brownie recipe, I actually only used:
- Dark vegan chocolate
- Vegan butter
- Oat milk
- Store-bought vegan vanilla frosting (specifically Simple Mills- though I know Wholesome Sweets also has a vegan frosting! I just wanted to keep these brownies no stress 🙂 ).
However, if you really want to make your Hocus Pocus spellbook brownies ghoulish, you can use activated charcoal to create a black icing, along with powdered sugar and dairy-free milk.
To make a red icing if you’d like, you can mix beet powder into a mixture of powdered sugar and dairy-free milk.
And to make orange icing, you can combined beet powder with turmeric powder into the powdered sugar and dairy-free milk mixture!
Now, the red and the orange won’t need to be used for this recipe, but it might be helpful to know in case you’re making any other vegan Halloween treats!
How to make vegan Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies
I walk you through how to make these Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies in their entirety down below in the recipe card.
However, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve to ensure that your spell book brownies are fit for Winifred Sanderson!
- You can use my favorite vegan fudgy brownies for the base brownie recipe, or even make these Paleo vegan and use my grain-free version! If you already have a favorite vegan brownie recipe or want to use a box mix, that’s also fine!
- Freeze the brownies before you begin! This helps the ganache set faster so that you can achieve that fully and evenly coated look of a spell book.
- Making a vegan “milk chocolate” ganache: this might seem a little odd, but it actually works! By using a vegan “milk chocolate” ganache, the book cover will be light enough to differentiate from the dark chocolate outline. This helps us avoid having to use any food coloring, vegan or not. However, stirring the dairy free milk into the vegan ganache takes a bit of patience. It won’t readily mix in, but keep mixing and I assure you that the milk will help lighten up the ganache!
- Use a toothpick or a spoon for the detailing: I actually used a spoon for mine because I wanted them to seem more rustic and organic, but if you’re in to that super detailed and perfect Hocus Pocus spellbook brownie look, use a toothpick! You’ll have a bit more control over where the icing is going.
- I used a store bought vegan vanilla frosting for the eyes. Instead of using a candy eye, which I’m actually not sure if there is a vegan version of that, I used store bought vegan vanilla frosting. You can, of course, make your own vegan vanilla frosting, but sometimes we need some convenience 🙂
- Allow the brownies to set in the fridge: this will help everything solidify before serving!
What are your favorite Halloween desserts?
I seriously want to know! One of my favorite Halloween desserts was always dirt pudding cups with gummy worms. My grandma and mom used to make them for us both during the Summer and right before Halloween, so last year, I decided to make a Paleo vegan version of them to pay homage to a childhood classic.
However, not every Halloween dessert needs to have chocolate! I also loved caramel apples as a kid too 😉 Or caramel popcorn!
What were some of your favorite Halloween desserts growing up? I’d love to know so let me know down below in the comments section!
I hope you absolutely love these vegan Halloween brownies too. I feel that the Sanderson sisters would be very proud, right? 😉 Let me know how these went for you as well, and be sure to give it a rating so that others may see!
As always, I love to see your beautiful creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there.
Happy spellbook brownie making! Oh, booooooooooooook! *my best Winifred impression lol*
More vegan Halloween candy and treats
Paleo Vegan Almond Butter Cups
Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cake
Paleo Vegan Caramel Lava Cakes
Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!
Vegan Halloween Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies
- Prep Time: 30
- Cook Time: 2
- Total Time: 32 minutes
- Yield: 10 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
These super easy and fun all natural Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies are sure to be everyone’s favorite Halloween dessert! With completely vegan ingredients, these Halloween brownies are fit for a Sanderson sister!
Ingredients
- 1 batch vegan fudgy brownies or your favorite vegan brownie box mix
- 1 1/2 cups vegan bittersweet chocolate chips, divided
- 1 cup vegan butter
- 1/3 cup oat milk or coconut cream
- 1 container vegan vanilla frosting, such as Simple Mills
Instructions
- Prepare the brownies according to the directions, and allow the brownies to fully cool (you can even place them into the fridge to chill while you make the vegan ganache).
- While the brownies are chilling, prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper, and place it into the freezer.
- In a microwave-safe medium bowl, microwave the vegan butter until completely melted and hot. Alternatively, you can do this on the stove top.
- Once the vegan butter is melted, add in 1 cup of the vegan chocolate chips and stir until the chocolate is completely melted into the vegan butter. Add in the oat milk or coconut cream, and stir until completely combined. It will take about 2 minutes, as the milk sometimes does not integrate into the ganache easily.
- Once the vegan ganache is spoonable and drippy, remove the vegan brownies from the fridge (this will make about 10 spellbook brownies) and the prepared baking sheet from the freezer. Use a fork to carefully place one brownie square into the chocolate ganache and fully coat the brownie. Remove the brownie from the ganache and allow any excess chocolate to drip back into the bowl (you want as much ganache in the bowl as possible for all of the brownies). Place the brownie onto the parchment paper and repeat for the remaining brownies. If you have any leftover ganache, you can do more brownies.
- Place the ganache coated brownies into the freezer to set for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, remove the brownies from the freezer. Using a small knife or toothpick, create an “eye” near the right edge of each length side of the brownie with the vegan vanilla frosting. It just needs to be one drop.
- Once all of the eyes are created, place the remaining chocolate chips into a microwave-safe bowl and heat in increments of 20-30 seconds, starting with one 30 second interval at first, stirring, then going down to 20 seconds, and stirring again until melted.
- Once the chocolate is fully melted and drippy, us a toothpick or a spoon to carefully drip and drizzle the spellbook design onto the brownies. You can follow the photos above, but essentially it’s two lines by the left length-side edge of the book, following by a zig zags over those, two curved lines on each right corner of the book, a circle around the eye, a dot for the pupil and 2-3 dots of chocolate around the book.
- Let the chocolate set in the fridge for 10 minutes, then serve!
Keywords: hocus pocus spellbook brownies, spellbook brownies, vegan halloween treats, halloween brownies, vegan halloween brownies, easy halloween treats
Can I substitute coconut oil for Vegan butter?
★★★★★
Hi Kelly! I haven’t tried out this specific version with the oat milk to make it more like a “milk chocolate ganache” but I have melted chocolate chips and coconut oil together to form the ganache- that works well!