Halloween Cookie Recipe

I’m not a huge fan of cooking or baking. My idea of a home-cooked meal is anything that can be pulled out of the freezer and prepared in the microwave. But there are, of course, a few things I never mind making myself- and one of them is my mother’s cookie recipe. She received it many years ago from a student of hers and it has been our family’s go-to ever since. We typically make them for Christmas, but they can be decorated for any occasion, so I’ve decided to share the recipe so everyone can bake these yummy cookies just in time for Halloween.

Here’s what you’ll need:

4 ⅓ cups flour

1 cup margarine

1 ½ cups sugar

½ cup milk

2 Eggs

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla

This will make about 3 dozen cookies, give or take, depending on the size and thickness you make them. Feel free to cut it in half if this is too many for you (But can you ever have too many cookies?) .

Directions

Start by softening the margarine. You can do this by letting it sit out in a bowl for about 30 minutes or just popping it in the microwave for 1-2 minutes. If you opt to microwave it, just be sure to watch it carefully so that it doesn’t melt.

Once your margarine is softened, mix it with the 4 ½ cups flour in a large bowl. This will take a little while, but is easy if you use a tool called a pastry blender. When you’re done, you should have a slightly-lumpy mixture that looks like this:

Tip: Don’t worry if it’s not perfect; it’ll even out later when you mix the other ingredients.

Next, mix the rest of the ingredients together in a separate bowl. It’s easiest to start with the milk and eggs, whisk them together, and then add everything else. Once these are all evenly mixed, add the mixture to your bowl of flour and margarine. Mix the two mixtures together thoroughly. It will be very sticky. Once they’re mixed, then congratulations: you have your dough.

At this point, it’s a good idea to refrigerate the dough for a little while. This will make it less sticky and a lot easier to work with when you’re using cookie cutters to cut it out. You can refrigerate it for however long is convenient for you. This could be a few hours or an entire day.

When you’re ready to start baking, take your dough out and roll it onto a clean surface. I prefer to do it directly on my kitchen counter. You may choose to do half the dough at a time to make it easier to roll out.

Make sure you sprinkle some flour on your surface and rolling pin. This will allow it to roll and pick up smoothly rather than sticking to everything.

Roll your dough to about half a centimeter thick. The thicker you roll it, the softer your cookies will be and the longer they will take to bake.

Some Halloween cookie shapes you may want to do are ghosts, pumpkins, cats, witch hats, spider webs, houses, bats, or skeletons/skulls. You can easily find cookie cutters at any grocery or craft store.

You’ll probably have to do several batches to use all your dough. Just ensure that the cookies in each batch are about the same size and thickness. Bake on an ungreased pan or cookie sheet for about 8-11 minutes, depending on their thickness.

When they’re finished baking, allow them to cool for a little while before decorating.

Here’s what mine looked like prior to decorating:

Decorating

The cookies taste great by themselves, but they taste even better with frosting or icing on them.

Here’s how I do it:

I prefer to use vanilla buttercream frosting. One jar is usually enough for the full recipe.

I split the frosting into a few separate bowls and use food coloring to make each bowl a different color. For Halloween cookies, I usually do orange, green, purple, plain white, black, and grey.

Tip: if you can’t find black food coloring, you can make grey by mixing equal parts yellow, red, and blue.

Ice them however you like.

Here’s the final product:

These cookies are always a hit with my friends and family, and I’m sure they will be with yours too. Enjoy!

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