Spooky Halloween Cookies!

Happy Halloween weekend! 

I hope you have plenty of plans to celebrate this spooktacular holiday in style :)

If you want to bake something a tiny bit more terrifying to tantalise your friends with, look no further than these spooooky cookies! They're really easy to bake and a lot of fun to decorate if you have the time. This recipe can be used to create whatever shapes you like at any time of the year but, as its Halloween, here I've opted for the classic bat-ghost-pumpkin trio.

Aaand as I'm a total child when it comes to any kind of festivity, obviously I had to give my bat, ghost and pumpkin-shaped cookies names...

...I had far too much fun with these, clearly!

Anyway, here's the recipe, if you want to give them a go :)

For the cookies: 

This is a wonderfully fuss-free recipe from Nigella that guarantees splendid-looking biscuits (that keep their shape!) every time. 

Makes around 20 large cookies (like mine) or 25-30 smaller ones.

- 90g soft unsalted butter
- 100g caster sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 200g plain flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the icing:

Recipe slightly adapted from this one. 

- 450g icing sugar
- 6 tablespoons of warm water
- 3 tablespoons of meringue powder/powdered egg
- gel colours of your choosing!

Method:

1. Cream the butter and the sugar for the cookies together until pale and almost mousse-like in texture, then beat in the egg and vanilla.
2. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the butter and the eggs, and then mix gently but surely. If you think the dough mixture is too sticky to be rolled out at this point (as I did!), add in a little more flour.
3. Bring the dough together with your hands, form into a fat disc and then wrap it in clingfilm and whack it in the fridge for at least one hour. Preheat your oven at this point to 180° (350° F). 
4. Once it's been suitable chilled, roll out your dough on a well-floured surface to a thickness of about 1/2cm. Cut out your shapes and place the cookies a little apart onto two or three lined baking sheets. Bake for 10-12mins until the edges of the biscuits are tinged with a lovely golden glow! Don't panic if they look a little soft and pale in the middle- they will set while they cool :)

When the cookies are fully cooled, you can get on with icing them!

5. Start by beating all the icing ingredients (bar the colouring) together until the mixture forms peaks. In a sturdy, stand-alone mixer this will take about 7-10mins at a slow speed...if you're using a hand-held it will take about 10-12mins at a high speed. Getting the right consistency for the icing is tricky but, at this point, you want something stiff enough to outline your cookies but not too stiff that it won't go through a piping bag! Aim for a pre-cooked meringue type of consistency- that's what worked for me anyway :)
6. Split the icing into separate bowls for adding different colours and then transfer whatever colour icing you plump for first into a piping bag.
7. Outline your cookies with a border that will act as a 'dam' to prevent your 'flooding' icing from spilling over the edges. Shaky hands didn't help me at this point and I must admit, I got quite frustrated with the whole piping sitch here BUT stick with it- it gets easier with every cookie, I promise!
8. Once you've outlined all your cookies in their different colours, add 1 teaspoon of warm water to each batch of icing to loosen it out and create the 'flooding' icing you want to fill the middle of the cookies. You can add more than 1 tsp of water to your icing if it's still a little stiff- what you're aiming for is icing with the consistency of thick honey.
9. Dollop a teaspoon of icing into the centre of each cookie and then spread it up to the outline with a small knife. I found a toothpick was helpful for getting into the all the tricky corners of each design... you can also use it to pop any small bubbles that might cheekily appear in your icing!
10. Allow the cookies to dry before adding additional decorations on top with any leftover icing you might have...

I did smiley faces on a couple of bats and even attempted some writing on the pumpkins (waaayy harder than Mary Berry makes it look) but you can decorate these beauties with whatever takes your fancy! Let those creative juices flooooooww xD

And that's it :)

Let me know if you decide to give these a go! And also let me know what you're Halloween plans are in the comments- I'd love to hear what you're all dressing up as!

In the meantime,
All the love,
Sian x