HALLOWEEN COOKING My kids love these cookies. We make them together for a lot of  the celebratory holidays. They are delicious and sooo moreish, it really is hard to just stop at eating one of them. They are also relatively easy to make and need less than ten minutes cooking time! My kids love helping my mix up the dough and then really enjoy cutting out all the shapes in the dough, although I got to honestly say, I think the best part for them is in the eating. TRICK OR TREAT – HALLOWEEN FOOD Now I know that on Halloween most kids are going to probably eat more than enough sugar, but being in Australia, trick or treating is not always followed and in some cases you have to drive your kids from street to street to find the few houses celebrating the day. This year Halloween falls on a day that they have extra curricular activities on until late after school so trick or treating is out this year. But they are not too upset as they have a spooky school disco to dress up for at the end of the week. The other thing that helped smooth things over was making several batches of these cookies, with most going to school to be shared with their class mates. HOW TO MAKE HALLOWEEN COOKIES Theses cookies are simple and easy to make and the end cookie really is worth the wait time that you need to allow the dough to cool in the fridge – minimum 30mins in the freezer or several hours in the fridge is best. INGREDIENTS: FOR THE COOKIES 1 cup of Sugar 150grams of unsalted butter room temperature (if you only have salted, omit the salt latter in the recipe) 2 Cups of white flour 1 Teaspoon of baking powder 1/4 teaspoon of salt 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla essence 2 tablespoons of milk FOR THE ICING 1 bag of Icing Sugar (the pure stuff, not the icing mixture for cakes) Water (amount varies but have a small jug on hand) Orange and Black gel food colour (if you only have liquid food colouring, make sure you use less water) UTENSILS YOU WILL NEED A stand mixer with a beater attachment Cup and Spoon measurement tools A spatula A fork or whisk and spoons Spare bowls Glad Wrap Rolling pin Cookie cutters – Halloween shapes work best for this project! Baking paper or a silicone baking sheet A baking tray or similar An oven and a fridge THE METHOD: Preheat a fan forced oven to 180 degrees celsius. (Adjust other ovens to best heat in regards to this temperature) Mix butter and sugar until creamed in an electric stand mixer with the beater. In a small bowl lightly whisk the egg, vanilla and milk. Add to the creamed butter and sugar and mix. In another bowl whisk the flour, baking powder and salt. Add half the dry ingredients into the wet and mix on low. When combined add in the last of the dry ingredients and again mix on low until a dough forms. Use the spatula to help you scrape the dough out of the bowl and place in heap on a large piece of glad wrap. Enclose the dough in the glad wrap so no air can enter and press dough together to form a disc shape. Place in the fridge for 2-4 hours. If you are scant of time place in the freezer for a minimum of 30 minutes. Lightly dust a large flat work surface such as a table (I use a sift to help me really cover the area evenly). Take the dough from the fridge or freezer removing the glad wrap (I usually break the dough into two pieces at this point to make the next steps easier) Kneed the dough in your hands back into a disc shape. Place the dough onto the flour dusted surface – don’t worry if your dough is sticky from not being cold enough, just use plenty of flour on you work surface – and roll it out evenly into a circle shape to a height of about 1cm. Use your cookie cutters to cut as many shapes as you can in the dough and place these onto a baking tray that is lined with baking paper or a silicone baking sheet. Make sure you leave ample space between each cookie incase they expand a little in the oven. Repeat steps 9-11 until you have used up all your dough or there is not enough room on your baking tray. Place in the oven for 8-12 minutes. Keep an eye on them, if they start to brown in any way they are ready. In reality they should come out of the oven almost exactly the same shade of creamy yellow that they went in, but as I have kids and am not always paying enough attention ours always get a little over cooked. Leave to cool for at least 10minutes. They will be quite soft when they come out and will harden as they cool. I have stone benches and I like to slide the baking sheet onto the cool stone to help the cookies cool even quicker.Once cool you can ice them TO ICE THE COOKIES We had halloween cookie cutters in the shapes of pumpkins, bats and ghosts. I got mine from Coles when I was doing my weekly shop so look out for them at your local grocery store. I split the bag of icing into three bowls and started with the orange icing first. Add in your gel food colouring and then slowly mix in a spoon of water into the icing sugar at a time, mixing until you get a paste like consistency. You do not want to add too much water as liquidy icing sugar will just run off the cookies.  Keep adding in more food colour if needed until you get the vibrancy of … Continue reading Goulishly Delicious Halloween Cookies