Thursday, October 29, 2009

Halloween Cutout Cookies



Halloween is a wonderful time of year to experiment with cutout cookies. You can make them as simple or as complicated as you like, or in my case you can try and fulfill the desires of a 5 yr. old boy whose only request was spiderweb cookies. I decorated this batch of cookies with my "little monkeys," four boys aged, 4, 5, 6, and 7 yrs. old, and a little "girl" friend age 6. So if I can do this with 5 kids, you can all do this!! I also did a batch of Jack-o-Lanterns all on my own.

The first thing we need is a no fail cutout cookie recipe. This is really the only challenging part of this whole process. Finding a cookie recipe that does not stick to everything, that holds up to the abuse of little fingers, and can be rolled and re-rolled is a challenge. This is truly the only recipe I actually follow to a T. I also found it in the most surprising place!!

It's a cream cheese recipe, that can be found at kraftcanada.com. Yes I did say cream cheese and it's surprisingly doesn't really taste like cream cheese. This dough will need to be refrigerated for at least 2 hours, I like to do it overnight. One day I make the dough, one day I bake the cookies and decorate them. It's a good system.

You'll need;

250 g. Cream cheese at room temperature (very important!!)
3/4 cup Butter at room temperature (very important!!)
1/3 cup Sugar
1 tsp. Vanilla
2+ cups All-purpose flour

As well, it's good to have parchment paper, cooling racks and obviously you'll need cookie cutters.

The first step is to make sure the butter and cream cheese are at room temperature. So I like to cut them into little 2cm X 2cm cubes. This speeds up the process of making sure they come up to room temperature and makes it easier when combine them. Do not melt them in the microwave!!! You'll have to refrigerate them longer, the dough will demand more flour, and it wont roll as nicely.



So with all that said, combine the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. Beat in the vanilla and the sugar.

Now with a wooden spoon, add in the flour a 1/2 cup at a time. When you have added the last bit of flour you'll need to use your hands and make sure the dough all comes together, you can do this either in the bowl or dump it out onto the counter.

Once the dough has come together, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap in a brick shape and refrigerate. If you wrap it in a ball, the middle will take longer to cool down and it's harder to roll out later.

Now is the perfect time to clean up the first mess and decide which cookie cutters your going to use, how your going to decorate your cookies and make sure you have all your ingredients for your icing.

My favorite icing recipe is super easy. Egg whites, icing sugar and a splash of vanilla. Now some people worry about using real egg whites because of bacteria, but usually the cookies are eaten within a week and I always make sure to buy fresh eggs for the icing. You can use either separate whole eggs, or now you can buy cartons of just egg whites which works the same.

So now that you have some refrigerated dough, preheat your oven to 350 degrees C. I also like to line my baking sheets with parchment paper, which means nothing sticks and clean up in a breeze.

I like to cut the dough into at least 3 even parts. Roll out each section to desired thickness and cut your cookies with cutters. Place cut cookies on baking sheet. Repeat until you pans are filled with cookies.

Bake approx. 8 minutes, or until firm. Bottoms should be slightly golden, but with little to no colour on the edges. Move cookies to cooling racks or a lined counter with parchment paper.

Continue rolling, cutting and baking until all the dough is gone. Makes about 36, 2 inch cookies.

Let them cool completely before decorating.

Now we need to make some icing, which I have no recipe for. I use this icing anytime I need an icing that dries hard. First beat your egg whites until they form stiff glossy peaks. For this batch of cookies only needing 2 colours I used only 2 egg whites.


Now add about 2tsp. vanilla, and slowly add some icing sugar about a 1/2 cup at a time. Now keep adding icing sugar until the icing has the desired consistency. I usually need up to 3 cups of icing sugar... it all depends.

Since we were making spiderwebs I wanted a thinner white icing and and thicker black icing. In a separate bowl I thickened the icing with more icing sugar and dyed it black using gel colours. I only use the gel colours which I find at our local bulk food store.

Making the spiderwebs was actually easier then I thought and the kids loved helping out. First I coated the cookies with thin layer of white icing. Then the kids pipped on black circles. Lastly, the kids pulled lines through the circle, always starting in the middle. There you go spiderwebs!!












We used the leftover black to decorate cats, using silver dagnets for eyes. I also made some pumpkins and decorated them as jack-o-lanterns.

1 comment:

  1. So awesome! They look great Crystal! you're inspiring me... maybe I'll get to making some homemade cookies soon!

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