SPOOKY COOKIES!

Well as you all know Halloween is fast approaching, which means that the tasty treat baking season is fast approaching.  Since last year I just did pumpkins and leaves, this year I really wanted to make fun Halloween cookies.  Every year my mom, a first grade teacher, has a Halloween party in her classroom.  I always want to be a part of it, but I am usually working and can never go.  Since I am able to go to her classroom this year, I thought what a great excuse to make a bunch of fun cookies!!

I found inspiration online and then began adding my own twist to it.  I have also been reading up on cookie decorating to help give me some helpful hints.  I always look to sweetopia.net, which has the most beautiful cookies I have ever seen.  She is really good about giving advice and responding to any questions.  I bought and read the book called, Cookies Craft: From Baking to Lister Dust, Designs and Techniques for Creative Cookie Occasions.  Long title, but really helpful.  The book really emphasizes narrowing down your designs and sketching them out ahead of time.  Here are my preliminary sketches.

Frankenstein, Vampire, Pumpkin, Cat, Ghost, Witch

Mummy, Spider and Web, Jack Skelington, Spider and Web

I have to say that the dough and cookie baking process went exceptionally well this time.  I decided to only make square and round cookies.  I mixed my colors and began decorating.

Icing Colors!

I piped all the background colors as well as the pumpkin faces and hair for the Frankenstein and Vampire cookies.  I also added the spider webs as well.

Spider Webs

In the next 2 pictures you can see how I was experimenting with making mummy cookies.  I had no idea what I wanted to do so I kind of just went for it!

Mummy experiment 1!

Mummy experiment 2! Oh and some orange round cookies!

Okay well before I finished for the day I had to prep my eyes and my spiders so that they would be dry to work with the next day.

You can see I made yellow and white eyes as well cat eyes and spider bodies.

The next day when I looked at my cookies I was pretty upset and disappointed.  For some reason the green, purple and black had discolored in various places.  The only thing I can think of was maybe there was too much water in those areas.  I just don't know since that has never happened to me before.  I was going to email the sweetopia woman and ask her advice.  I had no choice but to push ahead and decorate.  I really hate when I don't get my cookies perfect, but honestly in this kind of work it is pretty rare to have perfection.  Plus I am still learning and experimenting.  

You can see how the black in the middle is a different color.

Poor Frankenstein cookies have blotchy faces.

The purple witch faces had a bit of an issue as well.

 Here is a look at the rest of the cookies.

This was a left over cookie that I was just playing around with.

I think the mummy cookies came out better than expected.

Had a left over cookie and decided to just make a huge spider.

I made some mini pumpkin cookies as well.

These were 2 leftover cookies that I decided to make into pumpkins.

The pumpkin king!

Mummy!

AHHH Spiders!!

I want to suck you blood!

I think these cookies came out pretty well, despite the little issues I had.  I am trying to think what type of cookies I will make next.  I definitely want to use luster dust, but maybe that will work better for the holiday cookies.  I am also thinking that this year my holiday cards will be made out of cookies.  I am not totally sold on that idea since I send out over 100 holiday cards, but I am mulling over the idea.  

I hope everyone has a sweet Halloween!