HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
To celebrate the season, today is going to be a double post. We'll start off with some fun pumpkin cookies. What better way to get into the Halloween spirit then to make some ghoulishly delicious cookies? Now, In my own opinion, they were not pumpkin-y enough and tasted a little doughy, but I received rave reviews from many others for them, so despite my reservations I have decided to share the recipe. I will also include some tips that I think would make them a little tastier.
Here's what you'll need:
3/4 cup unsalted butter (always use unsalted butter when baking)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon orange zest (I only had lemon, so that's what I used)
1/2 cup solid pack pumpkin puree (I used pure pumpkin, from the can)
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (Next time I would double this)
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (Next time I would double this)
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (I wouldn't double this, but I would add 1/4 ground allspice as well)
1 pinch salt (just a pinch is all you'll need)
1. In a
medium bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and orange zest.
2. Stir in the
pumpkin.
3. Add the eggs and vanilla, mix well.
4. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and salt then stir it into the pumpkin mixture.
5. Remove the dough from the bowl and roll into a log, cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator. Chill dough for about 1 hour. (If you skip this step you'll be peeling dough off your counter, you need to chill the butter to make it pliable.)
6. Do all the dishes and scrub the surface you will be rolling the dough out on.
7. Preheat
oven to 375°F.
8. On a
lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. When you are rolling it do a few pushes of the rolling pin, then give your dough a quarter turn and continue rolling. Continue doing this until your dough is the desired thickness.(Mine were about 1/8 inch thick, but I wish I had done them a little thicker).
10.Bake for 10 to 12
minutes in the preheated oven.
11. When you remove them from the oven let them cool about 2 minutes on the sheet, then move to a drying rack.
Once the cookies are COMPLETELY cooled, you may ice them. You could use this recipe for Royal Icing, or this one for decorator's icing.
2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 tbsp + 1 tsp milk
1. Combine sugar, milk and vanilla and mix until smooth (add extra milk or icing sugar until the consistency you want is obtained)
2. Separate and add a couple drops of food colouring to tint your icing.
3. Ice as desired.
Here are my iced cookies, I know, I know, I need to practice my icing skills. The leaf cookie on the top left was a trial, which didn't quite work as planned as the different colours didn't fuse well when rolled together. However, all that I did was I separated some dough and dyed the it different colours before rolling it out and cutting it.
Here's how I iced the rest:
The ghost and mummy are cream cheese frosted with gel detail for eyes.
The pumpkin, skeletons and Frankenstein's monster are iced using only the tinted decorator's icing.
The eyeball has a base of cream cheese frosting, with red tinted decorator's icing drizzled over top. I then used a toothpick to drag the red around to make the veins. The iris is decorator's icing and the pupil is gel.
Finally, the spiderweb has a decorator's icing base and the gel is in 2 rings (outer and inner), then I used a toothpick to pull the gel from the inner ring out passed the outer ring.
I only had Christmas cookie cutters, so for the ghost, I just pressed the legs together. The leaf was a traced paper and the dough was cut out using a knife.
Good Luck! Happy Halloween!
Enjoy!
Mel
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