As I mentioned in this post, my kids had some friends over to decorate Halloween cookies. Thought I'd share the cookie recipe with you.
I was going to just make plain cookies, but I've been in a Fall Spice Sort Of Mood, so I came up with this recipe:
1/2 lb dark brown sugar
1 pound unsalted butter, room temp
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 lbs cake flour
4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
In one bowl, whisk together the cake flour and the pumpkin pie spice. Set aside.
Cream together the sugar and the butter until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, combining thoroughly and scraping the bowl in between additions, and add the vanilla. Add the flour mixture and blend until just combined.
Press the dough into a ball, flatten to a disk and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for an hour or so.
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Now, I did instruct you (like most roll-out cookie recipes do) to form the dough into a ball, etc., but what did I do? I - very rebelliously - or lazily - just dumped it into a plastic container and put that in the fridge. I don't know what's come over me. Next I'll be...oh...using a stand mixer to knead bread dough instead of doing it by hand! Oh, wait, I already to that. Never mind.
Where was I?
Oh, yes, the cookie dough.
Okay, when the dough has chilled for an hour, it's time to roll it out. I took a chunk of the dough and set it out on my flour-dusted counter to warm up a bit before attempting to roll it out.
Yeah. That looks nice, doesn't it.
Well, eventually it warmed up enough to roll out (and I admit, I whacked it with the rolling pin to help things along), and after that I proceeded in typical rolled-out-cookie-dough fashion - I rolled the dough to about a quarter of an inch thick, cut out my cookies, chilled them about ten or fifteen minutes, and then baked them at 350 degrees F for...12-15 minutes.
I started with bats. Lots of them. My niece was going to come over and decorate, too, and she's a huge Batman fan. So that's why I made lots of bats. Hi Natalie!
I didn't take pictures of anything else as I rolled the dough out. I didn't take a ton of pictures during the baking, or even the decorating. I just let the kids have fun. I didn't even take a turn until this morning. So here are a few pictures of most of the cookie shapes, not just bats,
but also plenty of pumpkins,
cats,
(it's blurry because it's a scardy cat and it was shaking with fear)
witches,
broomsticks (there were none left for me to decorate), ghosts,
and a few skulls and crescent moons. Oh, and some owls.
The cookies smelled wonderful as they were baking, and continue to smell fantastic now that they're baked and decorated. They're not lasting long, though.
For icing, I made a simple royal icing - 6 T meringue powder, 2 lbs confectioners' sugar, and 12 T warm water. I didn't make many colors, either - just black, orange, tan, and green. And I left some of it white.
So anyway, like I said, I did my decorating this morning, using what was left of the frosting. Julia was home, and she decorated a few more cookies as well.
And, to give Alex equal time, here are some of the remaining cookies he decorated the other day:
And that's my cookie-making story.
What's yours?
