Spooky Cookie

Hello Spooky Cookie !!!  Its time to trick or treat and what’s better the Cookies.  The best part about these is that they are easy to make and can even be decorated during  a Halloween Party as a part of the fun.  These are amazing good.  The sugar cookie is soft and the royal icing creamy with crunchy sugary top.  Yummy… and therefore the reason I have been a sugar high all day long.  To top it I had to chase it with coffee which officially makes this combination almost as potent as Vodka Red Bull.

I made the Martha Steward Sugar Cookie recipe, half of it.  I used: 1 1/2  cups flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/8 tsp salt, 1 cup sugar (little less), 1/8 cup packed light brown sugar, 1 stick butter, 1 large egg and 1/2 tbs lemon juice.

Note: Martha also adds 1/2 tbs lemon zest but life didn’t give me any lemons this time around

mix both sugars and butter in the mixer (add lemon zest if using) until fluffy.  While they are mixing sift together flour, baking soda and salt

We added egg and lemon juice and continue to mix on low

slowly adding the flour mixture

When the dough is incorporated, I used a tbs to measure equal cookies

I then rolled them into balls and placed on a baking sheet.  Make sure you space them well because they will become big.  I then flatten the dough slightly with a spoon.

Bake cookies until golden for about 15 minutes on 350 deg oven.  Cool on the cooling rack.  These cookies can be stored in the airtight container in room temp up to 3 days.

For the Royal Icing I turned to Alton Brown for recipe.  He asked for 4 cups powders (confectioners) sugar, 1 tsp vanilla and 3 oz egg white (approx. 2 eggs worth)

Place the egg whites and vanilla in a mixer with whipping attachment.

Beat on high until slightly frothy

at low speed add the confectioners sugar, a little at a time

when all becomes one the mixture will be shiny

Now it is time to speed it up.  Turn the speed up to high and whip for 5  to 7 minutes, until stiff glossy peaks form

at this time you can add food coloring.  Since I had no orange I added a few drops of red and a few of yellow, not an exact color wheel variation for pumpkin orange but oh well

Mixed it well

I don’t have piping bags and I seriously hope that my addiction to food never gets bad enough that I will have them at home.  Or I should rephrase: “I will buy piping bags if and only if they will be used to pipe up my livelihood and not only my waist line.”  As for now say hello to the Ziplock.

So I spread the icing all over the cookie but in all honestly did not look too good.  How do they can those cookies to look so good and not like they have been hit with cake frosting.

Then it hit me… water.   I put some water on my fingers and smoothed the surface out.  It worked like magic and it looked great when it was still wet.  Later not as much but still not as bad as before.  Now I let the cookies dry.

and open up some serious reading:

You see I can’t draw if my life dependent on it so take Ed Emberley books and use them so I don’t look too stupid to my kids.  Then the other thing I need to take out was the Gourmet Writer which is a pen that has eatable ink.  How cool is that.  I got mine in a Baking Goods Shop that I found (unfortunately for me located 5 min from my house) but you can get them on line.

I bought those two black pens but unfortunately, again, they also come in color version

I can only imagine the crazy cookie decorations you can make with those but since we are back to Halloween, Ed Emberley and my lack of artistic talent this is what we ended up with.

And in all honestly these cookies are so good, and addictive that it does not matter what you put on them, they will be all gone…. Happy Halloween will suffice.