A tray of Halloween cookies is guaranteed to delight trick or treaters who have visited house after house dishing out fun-size chocolate bars.
Compiling this post has taken longer than expected…. in between uploading pictures and typing up the Halloween cookies recipe I have had THE busiest Halloween Trick or Treat evening since moving to this house six years ago.
Walthamstow Village is full of young families and each year well behaved little bands of ghosts and witches troop the streets accompanied by parents. Armed with buckets they collect sweets, chocolates and from my house, halloween cookies. I know there are horror stories (no pun intended) about trick or treat hi-jinx but my experience has been a totally positive one.
The unspoken rule in my neighbourhood is that there’s a pumpkin displayed then you’re joining in. In previous years I’ve only had knocks from neighbours who knew us but this year we have our pumpkin proudly displayed and it’s been a busy night!
Next year I will be dressing Ted up and taking him out but this year we have been greeting everyone with pumpkin cupcakes and iced Halloween cookies. At the time of writing, we’ve had a dozen knocks at the door and all the halloween cookies and cupcakes have been devoured! Now we’ve moved onto popcorn, marshmallows and Maltesers. It’s a good job I am a baking blogger with cupboards stuffed with suitable offerings!
Baking Halloween cookies with children
Ted loves helping in the kitchen now and he got very excited about these halloween cookies. As you will see by the various costume changes in these pictures the halloween cookies were made in several sittings – first the dough, which was made before our holiday in Montenegro and frozen until we came back, secondly the baking and lastly the cookie decorating.
He even did a very appropriate “Scream Mask” style face for me.
The halloween cookies were made using a basic vanilla cookie recipe. The decorations were made with a Sainsbury’s Halloween cookies decorating kit comprising orange and black squeezy tubes of gel icing, purple sugar crystals, pumpkin and ghost shaped sprinkles. I made around twenty large halloween cookies using just half of the dough – the other half is still frozen and waiting for Christmas.
My large plastic orange Halloween cookie cutters came from Lakeland. The shapes are: witch, pumpkin, ghost and bat. They were ideal for Ted. I also had a set of small aluminium Halloween cookie cutters from Lakeland. The ones used here were spider and cat. I found the skeleton ones tore too easily.
Ted has been fascinated by Halloween today, he supervised my husband cutting the pumpkin (shown below) and has escorted each of us to the door with the tray of halloween cookies each time a group of trick or treaters arrived. I am definitely regretting not dressing him up now… next year I shall send him and my husband out to do it properly. Meanwhile, I dread to think what will happen later with all the sugar he’s eaten this evening. Something tells me to brace myself for what usually happens if he has a Slush Puppy… wide awake and singing at 2am. Oh dear.
- 175g (6oz) soft unsalted butter
- 200g (7oz) caster sugar
- 2 large eggs (US extra large), beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 500g (1lb 1.5oz) plain (all purpose) flour plus extra for rolling out
- Cream the butter and sugar together until pale, then beat in the eggs and vanilla. In another bowl combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and mix gently. Be wary of adding too much flour at this stage as you will add more when you roll the biscuits out and you don’t want it to be too dry.
- Halve the dough and form fat discs. Wrap with cling film and refridgerate for at least one hour. The dough freezes very well if you want to save half for another occasion.
- Whilst the dough is in the fridge, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
- Sprinkle your work surface with flour, place a disc of dough on it, and sprinkle a little more flour on top. Roll out to a thickness of about 5mm. Cut out your shapes and space well apart on the baking sheets.
- Bake for 8-12 minutes, by which time the Halloween cookies will be lightly golden around the edges. Cool on a rack and continue with the rest of the dough. Small biscuits will cook quicker so use this time as a guide.
- Decorate! Today I used a kit of ready made icing gels and sprinkles but you can make your own royal or glace icing.
What a great helper you have there Sarah, cool decoration on the cookies!
Yes he’s well trained!
He’s certainly a baking bloggers apprentice. Clever Teddy. I just love the cookies. xx
If that’s what you’re giving out to the neighbourhood kids, you’re going to have a queue down the road next year! 😀 Also, great idea to make the dough in advance and freeze it. Not sure I could ever be that organised though…!
It’s easy! You just make twice as much as you need!
That is indeed a god set of helping hands you have there
Those are awesome! Cute helpers.
Happy Halloween!
Cheers,
Rosa
Thank you!
Living in a flat, I am mercifully excluded from most of the T&T’ers (mostly 11+ and just looking for cash where I live, sadly). The only group I had this year included a teenage boy dressed as a zombie binman, for which he got a leftover cupcake from Cupcake Camp.
Very good decorations on those cookies. Wishing Ted good luck with his entry to the Autumn Bake Off!
A zombie binman? That’s a new one!!
Such cute cookies and Ted has decorated them wonderfully! He’s such a great helper and also he’s becoming so handsome! 🙂 I love the pics of him rolling the dough and cutting the shapes!
Thank you! He really got stuck into every step!
Looks like you had a great time. This is what it’s all about isn’t it.
Ace cookies, Sarah – ‘wooo!’, indeed. And it looks as though Ted thoroughly enjoyed himself, even if he didn’t go out. 🙂
He was too busy supervising the tray of cookies to go out…
ah, nice to see some piccies of Ted. I like the look of that chunky purple glitter too. We weren’t in to hand out our Trick or Treat Goodies so we have lots left for going in the boys pack up!
The glitter was my favourite too.
I love seeing all the little trick or treaters that come to our door. Looks like you had a great time baking cookies with Ted.
I know… I think I prefer to be home giving the biscuits out rather than accompanying a child around in the cold evening!
I live in Walthamstow, too, and had several callers at my house. I love that the kids and their parents feel safe to do this and that I can join in.
Ooh do you… off to check out your blog!
Aw what fab cookies – and so expertly decorated by Ted :-)We’ve got those cutters from Lakeland.
We had a great time this Halloween too – our bit of London was teeming with packs of kids dressed up as witches and monsters. It’s so great that us Londoners can still create a friendly community atmosphere for our children to feel safe enough to have a bit of harmless fun.
Yes I don’t know about all areas but there are definitely pockets of London that are like this.
Oh, what cute cookies! Looks like Ted might be following in your baking footsteps! 😉
You know I think you might be right… he’s dead excited whenever I make things now.
So cute! I love the glitter too. I bet they went down well with the trick-or-treaters.
I love the title of your post, Sarah. 🙂 Sounds like a delightful children’s story. 🙂 Such cute cookies and an even cuter helper! 🙂
Aww how cute are these! You and Ted did a great job! You can see how much fun he is having too! 😀
How sweet to finally get a peep in on Ted. How C.U.T.E. he is!! Can see he’s had a field day doing the cookies. Wonderful!
Love the fact that you involved kids in the job. Beautiful cookies.
I love cookies and your pictures. they are so funny. They give me joy.