ghost and skull sugar cookies

I wanted to have some fun and bake some skull and ghost cookies for Halloween and they are perfect to celebrate Day of the Dead too. I made sugar cookies and then used this awesome skull cookie cutter and little ghost that I found here, made some homemade icing.

Sugar Cookies
4 dozen

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs (I used egg whites)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
1.     Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg whites one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Gradually blend in the sifted ingredients until fully absorbed. Cover dough, and chill for 2 hours.

2.     Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. On a clean floured surface, roll out small portions of chilled dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out shapes using cookie cutters.

3.     Bake 6 to 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are barely brown. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Icing

Ingredients:

1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
    

Directions:

1.     In a small bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.

You will want to wait to put the icing on until the cookies are completely cool.

2.     Divide icing into separate bowls if you want and add food colorings to each. I kept mine white for the ghosts and skulls.

I recommend putting small amount of icing first, if you put too much it will run all over the place. So I did it little by little and it worked very well. And then I laid them flat for a few hours until the icing hardened.

For the faces, I mixed the left over white frosting with cocoa powder to make chocolate icing and then placed the icing in a ziplock bag, squeezed it to the bottom and snipped the corner of the ziplock bag to make my own icing dispenser, and then I decorated the faces as best I could. You can also use melted chocolate, little pieces of licorice or candy to decorate their faces.

 

This was my first time making these cookies and decorating them. I learned so much from this experience, so I think the next time I can decorate them much better!

I can't wait to make Christmas cookies!!

Enjoy!!