Halloween: we make decorated cookies

Halloween

Halloween is a holiday associated with fear and the supernatural, however this recurrence, whose origins date back to European pagan cults, is also linked to playful and greedy aspects. The formula “Trick or treat? ”, Translation of the famous“ Trick or treat? ", Embodies the essence of this spooky recurrence, which in global pop culture includes costume parades (better, but not necessarily, horror themed) and the distribution of candies and other delicacies, such as decorated cookies or cupcakes, which for the occasion can decline the horror theme by representing monsters, cemeteries and the like.

With the party almost upon us we had fun preparing our decorated biscuits and we thought we would share this experience with you, in case you want try your hand at preparing your own themed decorated cookies.

Super-easy Halloween decorated cookies

Our Halloween cookie is made up of two elements: the shortcrust pastry base and the sugar paste decoration . First you need to start working on the biscuit base. Our dough is a shortcrust pastry able to maintain its shape during cooking in the oven and with a sweet flavor and which, once decorated, will marry well with the texture of the sugar paste that we are going to add.

The recipe that you will find below can obviously be used for cookies of any type, just change the type of cookie cutter (for example snowflakes for Christmas, hearts for Valentine's Day, bunnies for Easter and so on) and the color of the sugar paste that it will adapt better to your occasion: as the Anglo-Saxons say only the sky is the limit.

For the preparation you will need some utensils present in any kitchen (electric mixer, measuring cups, spatulas, bowls to mix the ingredients and cookie cutters). The ingredients of our recipe are easy to find, however for the more particular ones we have included the Amazon links useful to retrieve the necessary materials.

For our cookies we will need the following ingredients:

125 grams of butter at room temperature 160 grams of granulated sugar 1 large egg 1 teaspoon (about 5 ml) of vanilla extract (Amazon link) 240 grams of flour to sift For decoration:

sugar paste, we used two blocks (black and orange) of 250 grams each (Amazon link) optional icing sugar: food glue (Amazon link) or icing in a tube (Amazon link)

Prepare the cookies

Preheat oven at 175 °.

To prepare the dough, first mix the butter and sugar together: it is important that the butter is soft, so we recommend taking it out of the fridge 30-45 minutes before starting to work of the dough.



The mixture we want to obtain must be soft and clear and this particular consistency can be obtained by beating the two ingredients together for about five minutes with a planetary mixer or electric whisk.

Then incorporate the egg and the extract of vanilla and continue to work the mixture for another two minutes. Add the flour to the mixture, sifting it and incorporating it gently until a homogeneous mixture is obtained. Transfer the dough onto kitchen cling film and wrap it to obtain a loaf that can be stored in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes.

After letting the dough rest in the fridge, it's time to roll it out to cut our biscuits. Dust the work surface and the rolling pin with a little flour: this type of dough tends to stick a lot to the work surface and to the rolling pin, then add flour gradually so as not to excessively harden the dough.

With a rolling pin, roll out the dough so as to obtain a surface at least 5 millimeters high. If the dough gets too hot and starts to "sweat" resulting excessively greasy, put it back in the fridge for 15-20 minutes to allow the fat to solidify again.

At this point all you have to do is cut the dough with cookie cutters, to respect the Halloween theme we used pumpkins and bats (link Amazon) and bake for about 10 minutes, using a baking tray lined with baking paper. We recommend keeping the leftover dough in the fridge between batches.

The height of your cookies will determine the cooking time: thinner cookies will take less time than thicker cookies, so we recommend always keep an eye on your trays, to prevent the cookies from overcooking or burning. Put the cookies to cool on a wire rack, they must be cold before continuing with the decoration.

Decoration

To decorate the cookies, roll out the sugar paste with a rolling pin using icing sugar , to prevent the fondant from sticking; the sugar paste must be very thin, so as not to make the biscuit excessively sweet.

Once the sugar paste has been rolled out, obtain as many shapes with the cookie cutters used previously. To glue the shape in sugar paste to the corresponding biscuit you can use a little food glue, some decoration icing or simply brush the back of the shape with water that will adhere to the surface of the biscuit.