Halloween Sugar Cookies

 

Sue and I made some cute Halloween cookies for our mother's coffee hour and for a bake sale this upcoming weekend. I'm not normally a huge fan of sugar cookies but this recipe stays soft and squishy.

We tried a new icing recipe and it was awesome. It dries shiny and hard so you can stack them.

This is my standby sugar cookie recipe. I used it to make the "fries" to go with our hamburger cupcakes. 

 

 

Sugar Cookies

 

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 shortening

1/3 butter, softened

2 eggs

2 Tbsp + 1 tsp cream

3 1/4 cups flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

Directions

Prepare dough early in the day or the day before as it does need to chill for at least 3 hours before baking.

In a large bowl, cream the sugars and shortening and butter. Add the eggs and cream.

In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients with a wire whisk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Mix with mixer until well combined. With hands, shape dough into a ball. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerator at least 3 hours, or overnight.

 When dough is chilled, preheat oven to 375. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

Roll dough out to about 1/4 inch or so thickness. (If you leave them thicker they stay softer / thinner is crispier.)

 

 

Cut with cookie cutters. Place cut outs on cookie sheet, at least an inch apart.

Bake at 375 for 8 - 10 minutes, until edges are just starting to turn light brown. Remove from oven, let cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack to cool completely.

Decorate as desired.

 

Sugar Cookie Icing

 

Ingredients

1 cup icing sugar

2 tsp milk

2 tsp corn syrup, light

1/4 tsp vanilla (or other clear flavoring)

food coloring

 

Directions

Mix ingredients together in a bowl until smooth. If icing is too thick, add milk - 1 tsp at a time, stirring after each addition - until desired consistency is reached.  (If icing is too thin, stir in more icing sugar.) Divide into separate bowls and stir in desired colors. Dip cookies or paint with a clean brush.

 

 

For our owl we used some edible candy eyes and a candy heart for the nose. We had a tube of store bought icing to help with the red lines.

 

 

Our bats have mini candy eyes and a candy heart cut in half for fangs.

 

 

Our dead gingerbread men in coffins! These guys were my favorite. If you scroll to the top of this blog you will see the guy with the 3 scratches on him. I had a whole story going for that guy. He was attacked by a werewolf on his way to buy chocolate for his girlfriend.

Tragic story.

 

 

Pretty pumpkins!

 

 

I was doubtful my vampire teeth cookie cutter would turn out to look like teeth.

It worked.

These were pretty cool. We used the tube of red icing to apply the blood on the tips of the fangs. If you wait a few minutes for the icing to start to set then you can drag a toothpick through it to create lines.

 

 

Sue was getting into the Halloween spirit.

Since her lips touched that cookie we had to eat it.

Weird how often that was happening....

 

 

There is the cookie collection we sent with our mom to her coffee hour. That is probably about half of the recipe. As you can see we also had a witch cookie cutter. For the life of me I couldn't decide how to paint them.... so we left them un-iced.

I said I was just being thoughtful...some people might not like icing on their cookie.

We also made little gingerbread mummies and gingerbread gunshot victims. We're not exactly sure how gunshot victims are Halloween-y but.... well....we'd been icing cookie for a while and were getting tired.

Halloween treats are some of my favorite to make. They are definitely fun.

 

Be sure to visit The Rustic Pig for some fun food and crafting links. 

 Adorned From Above also has some great links!