Halloween Sugar Cookies

Okay, this the last post of my cookie decorating series...for now.  A few weeks ago while I was doing some shopping, I saw this canister of Halloween themed cookie cutters and I had to have them.  

With Halloween approaching this week, I finally got around to making my cookies.  I made both my favorite Holiday Sugar Cookies and I experimented with Chocolate Sugar Cookies.  To decorate the cookies, I used Royal Icing.  To keep things simple, I used cookie cutters that would require similar colors.  I used the Chocolate Sugar Cookies to make black cats, bats, and spider webs.  I used the Holiday Sugar Cookies to make tombstones, ghosts, and candy corns.  

Disclaimer:  Although I am a veteran sugar cookie maker, I am a rookie at cookie decorating with royal icing.  I will take you through the steps I took in making my Halloween-themed cookies.  I think they turned out pretty good considering my experience, but they are by no means perfect!  

Since the icing starts out a pretty, pure white, I did the white outlining first on the candy corn, ghosts, and spider webs. 

To do the outline, put the icing in a pastry bag.  I used a #3 tip.

Then to flood, thin the icing and pour into a squeeze bottle.

When the outline is dry, squeeze a generous amount of icing onto your outlined cookies.   The white flood icing is used for the ghosts and tips of the candy corn. Use a toothpick to spread the icing to the edges of the cookie.  Your outline holds in the thinned icing.

Separate some of the original stiff icing and dye it black.  Put in a clean pastry bag and outline the tombstones, cats, and bats.

Next make thin black and grey icing.  Fill the tombstones with the grey, and the cats, spider webs, and bats with black.

To make the spider web, while the flood icing is still wet, take the thin white icing in the squeeze bottle and make two circles.

Using a toothpick, start in the center and pull icing to the edge of the cookie.

Now make a thin orange and yellow icing.  Fill in the candy corns.  On the picture below, the yellow on the left wasn't quite thin enough so it didn't spread well.  I added a little more water and continued.  The one of the right looks much nicer!

Allow all of the flooded cookies to dry before doing any detail work.  I used the stiff black icing in the pastry bag to make eyes and a mouth for the ghosts.

For the bats, I used the stiff white icing still in the pastry bag to make little eyes.  I also made faces for the cats.

To write on the tombstones, I used the stiff black icing, but switched the tip to a #1 to allow for more control.

After the spider webs had dried, I added a spider.  Again I used the stiff black icing.  I used a #12 tip to make the body of the spider, then put the #1 tip back on to draw the legs.

And those are my Halloween sugar cookies!  They were almost too cute to eat.  Almost!