Happy Halloween everybody!
If you haven’t read my previous Halloween cooking post please go ahead and do so by clicking on the personnel experiences category or go to https://bakedtothebone.wordpress.com/category/personnel-experiences/
anyways moving back to topic, this recipe is a very special one thats not only decorative and festive for the holidays, but it’s also very delicous, take my word for it. I will be sharing the recipe for how to make the sugar cookie dough, homemade frosting, and show how it is decorated or rolled out. One last thing, it was not until late in the recipe that I began taking picture and decided I would make a post on it so… for the first few simple steps on mixing the ingredients and adding them, their will be no picture, but I get you people are smart enough to understand without pictures 🙂
Enjoy and…. boooo (insert ghost emojji)
Sugar cookies
- 3 sticks softened unsalted butter
- 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- In your stand mixer or in my case since my stand mixer is in for repair, using a hand mixer, cream your sugar and butter together in a bowl for about a minute or until well combined
- Next, add in the eggs one at a time mixing thoroughly before adding the next egg. Once all four eggs are mixed in, add in vanilla extract and mix for another minute
- Turn your stand or hand mixer to a very low speed of stir or speed 2 and add in dry ingredients (salt, flour, baking powder), if your speed is too high, you’ll be covered in flying flour! The dough should look like as below once your done following steps/done mixing all ingredients.
4. Finally cover the top of the bowl with the dough with plastic wrap or cloth, and let them sit in a refrigerator for 45 minutes or overnight so the dough could chill.
5. After 45 minutes or overnight, remove bowl chilled dough from fridge and remove plastic wrap from top of the bowl. Also remember to lightly flour your work surface before rolling out your dough.
6. Take out the chilled dough from the bowl and onto the floured surface. The dough might be very hard but that is completely normal. That’s why For this next step I recommend (as I did 🙂 to sprinkle some flour on top of your ball of dough and begin to smash and knead the dough with your bare hands occasionally sprinkling more flour on top so your dough is not sticky, trust me its a pain in the *** when you begin to cut out the dough into circles.
7. Using a rolling pin. begin to roll out your dough. Remember to add a little bit more flour onto your dough while rolling. Also, I recommend as a tip that will make your cookies better, I personally like to dust my dough with sugar and roll it out.
8. Make sure to roll your dough outwards from every side so the dough is even, remember not to roll the dough out too thin or else your cookie will be like a cracker! Before cutting cookie into shapes, preheat oven to 350 degrees.
9. Finally cut dough into shapes of circles using a cookie cutter or round object and load onto greased cookie sheet/tray.
As for the green tips of a pumpkin, they are simple to make, just take any left over dough you have, and shape it into a nugget or rectangle and add a drop of green food coloring to it to make it green, and then simply attach it onto your round cookie shapes.
10. Finally place cookies into preheated oven for 7 minutes or until the cookie is brown around its edges.
cookie should be brown around edges , note both pictures to the right of the first picture are the cookies after they came out of oven
Now that our cookies are baked and out of the oven, let them cool and sit, Now here is the recipe for homemade orange frosting that you should be preparing while cookies cool
Orange frosting:
- 2 cups confectioners sugar
- 1/2 stick of softened unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 tablespoon milk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 tablespoon orange food coloring
1. In a bowl, add confectioners sugar and butter and begin to mix by hand using balloon whisk
2. While mixing add milk and vanilla extract and continue mixing until mixture forms into frosting
3. Finally add 1 tablespoon of orange food coloring and beat until frosting is perfectly incorporated with color
Now that we have our amazing looking homeade frosting made, it’s time to decorate our cookies to further more look like pumpkins
For decorating:
- 1 recipe sugar cookies
- 1 recipe orange frosting
- Package of Halloween themed sprinkles
Using your outlet spatula, grab a nice sized glob of frosting and begin to spread it across the pumpkin shaped cookie
Once you at least get done frosting half of your cookies (about 12 cookies), place them on any tray or plate. Next, begin to sprinkle Halloween themed sprinkles on top of cookies.
Once the cookies are decorated and sprinkled, place them in a refrigerator for 10 minutes so the frosting isn’t wet and so that it can cool onto the cookie properly with the sprinkles.
Lastly, after 10 minutes take your delicious pumpkin looking cookies out of the fridge and enjoy or serve to guests at Halloween party.
Summary:
Well there you guys have it, a perfect recipe for any form of celebration. even if it isn’t Halloween you can still use the awesome sugar cookie recipe and shape them out for any occasion, doesn’t have to be pumpkins! 🙂 same goes with the frosting recipe, if for another occasion just skip orange food color and boom… their it is frosting and normal sugar cookies.
Thanks for reading and if you get a chance comment and give me some feedback. You can always contact me at zubairmuhammad827@gmail.com . Happy Halloween and scariest of wishes to all.
– chef/author Zubair M.
Baked to the Bone 