A week of making Halloween cookies

Based on the title, you'd think that spending a week making Halloween cookies would result in more cookies than an elementary school bake sale. Not quite. I've just been so busy that this one batch has extended itself into a 5-day long process.

Sunday night, I drew out my cookie designs, which is the lesson I learned while in Denver. I made Martha Stewart's Ideal Sugar Cookies batter and popped it in the refrigerator. Fortunately, I already had brandy in the house (not Moesha's Brandy, but I think she would have liked the cookies as well).

Monday night, I baked the cookies to 1/8" thin, as directed by Martha, using an actual ruler to measure. Normally I would have made thicker, chewier cookies, but I wanted more cookies for practice. I ended up with about 75 2.5" circles. I am fine with how thin they are - I can achieve a better icing:cookie ratio - but I had to adjust my baking time. For the last couple trays, I baked them for 7 minutes at 350, which was perfect.

Tuesday night, I made Bridget's royal icing in orange, black and purple (also left some white). I piped and flooded the orange cookies and the purple cookies, to leave those to dry for the night. I wanted them to be super firm for the next step. I made it a bit too thin this time, because a few cookies had the icing drip right off the edges onto the table. Ah well. It isn't like the icing was wasted. Did I use my finger to scoop up the icing and eat it off the table? Perhaps. To make the spiderweb cookies, I piped and flooded the black cookies. After a few minutes, I added an orange dot in the center, with 3 orange / purple / orange concentric circles around the dot. Then I dragged a toothpick from the center to the outside for 7 to 9 spokes that look like a spiderweb. What was great was seeing that this design is VERY forgiving. Some of my circles were ovals, some of the colors started to blur, and some were just messy. No worries, and once I started toothpicking, all of the cookies looked really neat. Except for the one that dripped onto the table, which was eaten immediately. It was the weak one of the herd.

Wednesday night, I only had time for a quick project. I basically stamped a little bat onto each cookie, by taking a rubber stamp and using a paintbrush to paint it with black gel food coloring that was only slightly diluted with water. Immediately after stamping each cookie, I sprinkled it heavily with black sanding sugar. I pressed the sanding sugar down gently, then gave the cookie a shake. One of the things I learned quickly was to lean down and get close to the cookie and the stamp, so I could actually see what part of the cookie the stamp was stamping. Some cookies were a little uneven, so at first I'd pull the stamp up and there would be just half a bat. Using a tip I learned from a Bridget video, I did the sprinkling over a piece of parchment paper so I could pour the extra sprinkles back into the bottle (i.e. my mouth) later.

Thursday night, I did the ghosts on the orange cookies. The black outline of the ghosts was not pretty or consistent, and it was way too thick. But adding the white after it had time to harden slightly made a huge difference. They looked like cute little ghosts then, and I just toothpicked their hands and tails so the lines would make cute little V's. I sprinkled each one of these with white sanding sugar, too.

Things I could improve on: icing consistency and sloppy piping. But, all in all, I'm pretty proud of how these turned out. Although it isn't even October yet and I have a pile of Halloween cookies staring at me.

See you next week for the Pumpkin Challenge!
Madcap J.