Witches, Cats and Big Black Bats
By Rachel Davies
Halloween’s coming, Halloween’s coming, skeletons will be after you; witches, cats and big black bats, ghosts and goblins too…
It’s that time of year again when fancy dress, trick-or-treating and pumpkins are everywhere, and fake blood and cobwebs come into their own.
I thought I’d share these Halloween biscuits, which are fun to make and can be as terrifying as you like! You’ll need a bit of specialist kit and some Halloween cookie cutters (suppliers details below), but if you enjoy making these, you can use the decorating techniques to make biscuits for all kinds of occasions.
To start with you need to make the Halloween-shaped biscuits by following the recipe below. I use the talented Peggy Porschen’s cookie recipe which always works well and tastes lovely.
Sugar Cookies
Makes 25 cookies
Ingredients
200g unsalted soft butter
200g caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
400g plain flour, plus more for dusting
Method
Using a standing mixer or electric whisks, beat the butter and sugar together until just creamy. Don’t overwork, or the cookies will spread during baking.
Beat the egg into the mixture until thoroughly combined.
Add the flour and mix slowly until a dough forms. Press the dough together into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 180C, Gas 4. Knead the dough briefly and roll it out onto a floured surface to 5mm thickness. Cut shapes using cookie cutters, and place on a baking tray.
Bake cookies for 6-10 minutes, or until lightly golden around the edges. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Once cool, the biscuits are ready to decorate. For each colour you’ll be using, mix about 150g royal icing in a bowl with a little water and some gel food colouring. You want the icing to be ‘soft peak’ – it should hold a peak, but be soft enough to be able to pipe. Put some of the icing in a piping bag with a small nozzle, and pipe the outlines of the cookies.
Add a little more water to the remaining icing, giving it a liquid consistency. Put this in another piping bag, and use to flood the cookie.
Allow the icing to dry, and finally add any detail you like with soft peak icing, being as creative as you like.
And that’s it. Happy Halloween!
Disposable piping bags can be bought online from nisbets.co.uk
Gel food colours, piping nozzles, cookie cutters and rolling pins can be bought from sugarshack.co.uk.
Want to learn how to make more delicious food? Sign up to Rachel’s classes.
