Happy Halloween (October 2013)

I think my daughter goes to one of the last preschools where homemade treats are still allowed (given that they don't contain nuts).  To be extra careful, I replaced my almond extract with extra vanilla extract, but then I was off and running with the thought of making cookies for a reason...a fun, festive reason-Halloween.  I kept thinking of places I could bring these cookies to share, so I decided to make 2 batches of cookies, all of minis, yielding close to 300 in total.  

The baking didn't actually take that long, since they were all made out of 4 cookie cutters, and the decorating was also not all that time-intensive, since they all had the same color themes, and taken individually, were fairly simple designs.  My brain was working overtime with the designing and planning (mostly regarding the order in which to use the colors to save myself from making the same color twice or doing too many extra dishes), and although I'm sure some think I'm crazy, I want to emphasize how much I really enjoyed this project.

All these cookies were made from 4 cookie cutters.  Mini pumpkins (obviously), mini leaves (candycorn), mini circles (flying bats, spider webs), and mini tulips (ghosts, owls).  Somewhere on-line I had seen an idea to use a tulip cookie cutter for a ghost, but otherwise, the designs were all my own this year, some inspired by my kids' favorite window clings.

For most of the cookies, I outlines them with a piping consistency and then flooded them with a thinner consistency of icing, as I usually do.  But, for the pumpkins and for the candycorn, in order to, again, save some dishes and to give them that bumpy texture, I used something Sweet Sugar Belle calls, 20-second icing. 

This smaller plate went to my son's park district music class, mostly for the adults to share and for his teacher.

 

And, for my daughter's preschool class, I bagged about 6 cookies for each student, slapped a little label on them, and they were ready to go.  Afterwards, I saw some other moms had used bag toppers on their kids' treats...a good idea for the future to dress up these resealable snack bags.

And, I saved a few extra colors to make a more, well, feminine version of the Halloween cookies to bring to my daughter's ballet class for all the girls.  The kids liked the black cats and the ghosts wearing a tutu (my first attempt at brush embroidery, and although not perfect, definitely a technique I want to try again).

Happy Halloween!