Halloween cookies
Ingredients
- 200g unsalted butter, very soft
- 140g golden caster sugar
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 300g plain flour, plus extra for rolling
- 100g raspberry jam (or use lemon curd or chocolate spread)
For the icing
- 140g icing sugar, sifted
- food colourings (optional)
Method
- STEP 1
Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line 2 large baking sheets with baking parchment. Put the butter, sugar, egg yolk, vanilla and ¼ tsp salt into a large bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth. Stir in the flour to make a stiff dough, then shape into 2 discs, cover with cling film and chill for 10 mins.
- STEP 2
With plenty of extra flour on the work surface and rolling pin, roll a batch of dough to the thickness of a £1 coin. Stamp out as many 7cm rounds as you can. In half of the rounds, stamp out 2 eye sockets with an apple corer, then use well-floured fingers to pinch the jaw shapes. Lift onto the baking sheets. Bake for 15 mins or until pale golden, then cool for 2 mins before lifting onto a wire rack.
- STEP 3
Sandwich the cold biscuits together with the jam. Mix the icing sugar with 4 tsp water until smooth, divide into 3, then colour as you like. Put into piping bags, snip off the tips, then pipe spooky patterns and faces onto the skulls.
RECIPE TIPS
MAKE IT SIMPLER
To make the recipe simpler for young children, there’s no need to stamp out the eye shapes – just shape the jaws and bake. Stick on round sweets or pipe on eyes with writing icing as part of your decoration.
Recipe from Good Food magazine, October 2010