IT WAS A SPOOKTACULAR BAKING WEEKEND

This weekend I had my Great Nephews Sawyer and Kelvin. It was a Halloween theme. We first stopped at my parents farm and picked up some pumpkins to decorate. Then we headed back to my place for a fun filled Halloween good time. Pumpkins, Pumpkin coloring books, and time to bake some fun Halloween cookies.

Kelly Cordes
Kelly Cordes
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I stopped by Crafts Direct last week and bought pumpkin, bat, and ghost shaped cookies cutters, along with a box of cookie frosting mix. Then a trip to Coborn's for some Pillsbury sugar cookie dough, some candy corn and food coloring, and I was all set.

Supplies:

  • Frosting Decorating Mix for sugar cookies
  • Tubes of black, orange and white frosting
  • Food Coloring
  • Halloween cookie cutters; ghosts, bats, pumpkins
  • 4 rolls of Pillsbury cookie dough or make your own...if you dare. You can find this in the refrigerated section at your grocery store
  • flour
  • wax paper

NOT AS EASY AS I THOUGHT

My Aunt Marlene makes these cute little pumpkin cookies every year. It's turned into a tradition. I thought it looked like a fun project...but I quickly realized that It's a lot harder than it seems.  Marlene...my hat is tipped to you for your painstaking efforts to bring a little cookie joy to us every Halloween...and all year long..for all the other amazing treats you make.

I did save some cookies to bake for when the boys when back home, and then it was a lot easier to complete. Here are my tips for an enjoyable cooking making experience.

TIPS

Have a large clean space for rolling out your cookie dough.  Make sure you flour your baking area, flour your rolling pin, and put a little flour on your hands. Roll out the dough to the thickness you prefer, and cut out the cookies. I think it's easier to  make all your ghosts on one sheet, then pumpkins on another and bats on another. I probably made 2 pans of each...and remember that the cookies will expand when you bake them, so once you cut out the cookies put them on the pan at least an inch apart so they don't bake together.

Bake your cookies and freeze them one day...and then choose a different day for decorating. It works much better. My Nephews and I decorated a few cookies, I sent them home, and then the next day...I made another attempt at finishing the rest of the cookies. These were frozen so they were much easier to work with, and the frosting hardened much quicker.

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SUGAR COOKIE DOUGH

I originally was going to make the sugar cookie dough, but in this case, I'm really glad I didn't. It saved me another day. If you make your own dough, you usually have to let the dough chill for a few hours, so you're looking at another day.  These adorable little cookies really are a 3 day or 3 weekend project if you don't want to get sick of doing it.

DECORATING SUPPLIES

I actually purchased some frosting in a bottle in orange, black and white, to do some outlining..but I'm not good at it...but it did work well for the ghost faces...as you don't have to be perfect.

Candy corn is easy to work with and is a quick cute decoration to use for your pumpkins.

The frosting was from a kit and all I did was add water..but I added a little too much...so I just kept adding more powdered sugar to get the consistency I was looking for. Once it was just right, I frosted everything that needed to be white first...then I added red and yellow food coloring to the remainder of the frosting to make an orange color to frost my pumpkins. I also had a few bat cookies left over so I added a little blue and green trying to create a black frosting for my bats...but I never really achieved it...but it was good enough. It was sort of a fun greenish blue color...very cute for my little bats.

After the frosting dried, I took my black bottle of frosting and made eyes and a mouth on my ghosts.  A really cool after effect was it made these little tiny lines that looked like something from Jack Skellington!

DRYING TIME

A lot of people think that the cookies are going to be ready to package up immediately..but not so fast. You're going to having cookies drying all over your kitchen for a little while....so make sure you have room and you have time.  :-)

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