Halloween Sugar Cookies

Sprinkling a bat

This is my Halloween post, part II.  I really felt the need to make these cookies, even though they were pretty tedious and time consuming.  I recruited Caroline to help me with the decorations. I took my recipe from The Joy of Cooking, doubling both the cookie batter recipe and the frosting recipe:
 

Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup white or brown sugar (I used white)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla (I used half almond extract because I love the flavor)

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream the butter and sugar together. Beat in remaining ingredients.  Chill the dough 3 to 4 hours before rolling.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Roll out, cut, and place cookies on a greased or lined cookie sheet. Bake 7 to 12 minutes.

Ready to be decorated

 

 I also took the frosting recipe from The Joy of Cooking:

1 lb (4 cups) confectioner's sugar

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

2 to 4 tablespoons milk or heavy or light cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Site confectioner's sugar into a large bowl.  Add and mix the remaining ingredients and mix well with an electric mixer.  Continue beating until frosting is smooth.  It will be slightly stiff.  Add more liquid to reach the proper consistency.

I didn't know they sold black food coloring!

The frosting actually tasted really good. We separated the frosting and made three different colors: black, orange, and white. For white, I read that one or two drops of blue food coloring helps the color stay bright.

Ready to play

Then came the fun part. We had a blast decorating these special cookies.  We had a few tubes of decorative gels as well as some colored sugars. 

 

Feeling silly

 

So...many...cookies

So, we took these into work on Halloween and everyone  enjoyed them. However, there were a lot of bats left over. For some reason, no one seemed to want them (black frosting not appealing?). I was supposed to work a double and actually ended up getting cut... kind of think the cookies helped me get the night off!