Yes – I’m back!   I started a new job over the summer (now that my youngest is in Kindergarten) and that, combined with getting four boys back to school, has made it nearly impossible for me to post anything.  But, since Halloween in a house full of boys is almost a bigger deal than Christmas, I figured I’d better get on the ball. I thought I’d share some of my cookie creations from Halloweens past – some are more detailed, but others are super easy.  You might also check out my Cookie Gallery . . .

My favorite Sugar Cookie recipe was used to create the Black & White cookies pictured above. Royal Icing was used to decorate them.

The same Sugar Cookie recipe was used to create these great Candy Corn Cookies. A small amount of yellow and orange gel icing coloring can be used to tint the dough for the larger sections. You bake it like a small pizza & then cut the ‘slices’ into the individual Candy Corns. You can use round cookie cutters or bowls of different sizes to cut the circles – and then assemble them before baking. I put white Royal Icing in the tips after cutting, because I thought the plain dough wasn’t quite white enough. You can make them any size you want, but my finished cookies were only about 2 inches long.  I found a great tutorial on these at sugarandspiceandallthingsiced.com.

I made the Skeleton Cookies on the left from a recipe I found for Rolled Chocolate Sugar Cookies.  They were really yummy, but a bit more crumbly than the regular Sugar Cookies I make, FYI.  Use your basic gingerbread man cookie cutter to make these.  The skeleton details were created with plain white Royal Icing.  Another variation would be to use the regular Sugar Cookie recipe, then to outline and fill them in black – and finish with white for the skeleton details; both the black & white again would be Royal Icing.  (See the photo above right that I found on Pinterest, courtesy of CookiesBySteph, via Flickr.)

These silly Candy Corn face cookies were by far the easiest to make and probably the most popular with my boys.  You start with Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer Cookies and a tub of store bought icing – my favorite is Duncan Hines Buttercream.  Then you’ll use a bit of food coloring or gel icing color to tint the frosting orange.  You can make sandwich cookies, like I did (with frosting between two wafers), or do the faces on the cookie tops only.  You will use the frosting as your ‘glue’ for the candy corns – put it in a disposable pastry bag (with a #2 or #3 tip) or you may use a zip lock bag, with just the smallest snip off of one of the corners.  For the pupils in the eyes you can use chocolate icing or, as I did, buy a small tube of ready made black gel icing in the bakery aisle.

Happy Halloween!