Hey friends!
The other day my daughter and I were riding in the car and she started giving me grief about not putting Halloween decorations in the yard. I understand her point because our neighborhood is littered with skeletons, ghosts hanging from trees, fog machines (yep), and plastic grave stones. I kid you not, there is a house down our street that has plastic arms and legs covered in blood thrown all over the front yard. It’s hilarious and totally creative, I get it, but as I explained to my daughter, Halloween decorations are just not my jam. Maybe it’s the Dave Ramsey philosophy in me, but it’s hard for me to justify spending money on plastic body parts and grave stones. Halloween is so fun, but the decorations are usually over priced and lets be honest, they’re ugly!
So rather than jazzing up the outside of our house for Halloween this year, we are having some Halloween fun (shocker), in the kitchen. The only rule is that I am only willing to bake Halloween desserts that I like. No dead people, graves or bloody limbs on the menu. Instead, this past weekend we celebrated the season of spookiness by whipping up cookies inspired by the iconic queen of Halloween, the Bride of Frankenstein!
To begin, I found the best Bride of Frankenstein cookie cutter on Amazon. The cookie cutter is $15.00 which is a little expensive, but it’s copper which lasts forever.
Next, I used our basic cut-out cookie recipe, which I have perfected over the years. The recipe is very easy and the dough cuts out into clean shapes much better than store bought dough. I pinky promise!
Here is the recipe:
- 1 cup room temperature butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 tbsp milk
-
Combine sugar and butter.
-
Add eggs and combine.
-
Stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the mixture and combine.
-
Add vanilla and milk.
-
Place the cookie dough on wax paper and let sit in the refrigerator for a minimum of one hour.
-
Once chilled, roll out onto a floured surface and cut into shapes.
-
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-
Place on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes or until slightly golden brown.
-
Once cooled, decorate with royal icing or glaze.
Finally, I made one batch of royal icing and separated it into colors. For putting royal icing on cookies, try skipping the fancy piping bags and use plastic bottles like the ones below. These squeeze bottles make decorating so much easier for beginner bakers, and the clean up is a breeze.
Lastly, for the icing itself, we used our never-fail Basic Royal Icing recipe.
- 1 16 oz. box confectioner's sugar
- 1/2 cup pasteurized egg whites (Egg Beaters)
- food coloring as needed
- 1 tsp lemon juice
-
Combine powdered (confectioner's sugar) and egg whites in a mixer.
-
Add lemon juice and food coloring.
That is it! The great thing about this cookie and royal icing recipe is that once you’ve got it, you can adapt it for fun cut-out cookies all year long. I can assure you that no matter what, your cookies will always look great, even if you are baking creepy skeletons and grave stones!
Happy Halloween!
Emily Mingledorff
Leave a Reply