Halloween Cookies

Ok...I have a guilty secret....I too have been lured into purchasing Halloween merchandise... I bought some cookie cutters in Sainsbury's! But I did need some more cookie cutters and my son has his class cake bake next week...and...are they good enough excuses?

I used them when I made some cookies today.... here is the recipe.

Halloween Cookies
Makes 10 cookies (depending on the size of your cookie cutters!)

Ingredients:

160g plain flour
100g butter, cut into small chunks
50g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (I love Neilsen-Massey Vanilla)
1 large egg yolk

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to  180°C / 356F / Gas Mark 4.
2. Put the flour and butter into the food processor. Mix until breadcrumbs start to form.
3. Then add the egg yolk, sugar and vanilla and whizz until it starts to form a dough ball.
4. Carefully take the dough out of the processor - minding the blade. Gently form into a ball.
5. Roll out on a floured work surface until it's about 6mm thick. 
6. Cut out the cookies using your cookie cutters and place on a baking tray that has some oiled grease proof paper on it.  If you don't have grease proof paper, you can just grease and lightly flour the tray.
7. Cook in the oven for approximately 14 minutes or until the cookies start to brown.
8. Put on a cooling rack and leave to cool down for about 5 minutes.
9. Dust with icing sugar using a seive.

You can double up the cookie mix if you need to make a larger quantity.

Sainsbury's Halloween cookie cutters.

I was a little disappointed with the Sainsbury's Halloween cookie cutters. If you press too hard on the dough, the stalk of the pumpkin and the lower jaw of the skull comes off. The spiders legs snapped off very very easily when I transferred them to the cooling tray. The witch just looked totally rubbish so I only made one of her and ate her as soon as she came out of the oven...yummy! That was pay back for Hansel and Gretel :-)

For the class cake bake I think I will only be using the skulls and pumpkins. 

It does make me wonder whether anybody at Sainsbury's actually tested this product before putting it on the market.

Cookies before they have been sprinkled with icing sugar - you may just be able to see where the spiders legs have snapped off.