Halloween Cookie Ideas

One of the easiest Halloween foods to make, which also allows you to express your cooking creativity, is cookies. These bite-sized snacks are a tasty and easy-to-serve treat for all those hungry, dressed-up, trick-or-treat folk, that come knocking on your door as well as to serve as a snack for Halloween parties.

So for some easy cookie recipes that are in the festive spirit, go through the following Halloween cookie ideas and recipes listed here.

Ingredients

• 1 (12 ounce) packet or 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3 eggs
• 48 chocolate candy kisses
• 1 cup dry roasted peanuts, finely chopped
• 1 cup chocolate frosting
• 1 tube white decorator's frosting
• ½ cup butter
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
• ¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

• In a saucepan, melt butter and chocolate chips on low heat for 6-8 minutes.
• Stir or mix occasionally. The chocolate should completely melt and mix with the butter.
• Remove saucepan from heat and let mixture cool for 30 minutes.
• Mix sugar, vanilla and salt with chocolate mixture, then add the 3 eggs. Stir mixture well.

• Add flour and keep stirring mix till flour and chocolate form a thick paste.
• Cover the paste and store it in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight, until it turns firm. Preheat oven to 325° F.
• Take small teaspoon-sized spoons of the cookie dough and shape them into small 1¼ inch-sized, slightly flattened balls.

• Place chopped peanuts in a bowl and roll the dough balls one by one in the peanuts, coating each ball. You may need to press the balls for the peanuts to stick.
• Line up the balls on a cookie sheet and bake in oven for 11-13 minutes, until cookies are slightly firm.
• Leave cookies to cool completely. Pipe a little chocolate frosting onto the cookie.

• Place chocolate kiss on frosting and fix it to the cookie. You can decorate the kiss with white or yellow decorator's frosting.
• Hint: Instead of making the cookies from scratch, you can fix the candy kisses to ready-made cookies using decorator's icing.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ unsweetened cocoa
• 1 packet candy corn
• 1 packet chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt

Directions

• Mix sugar and butter in a large bowl. Mix by hand or use an electric mixer at medium speed.
• Beat in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix well.
• Combine all other ingredients, except for candy corn in a medium bowl.

• Mix the egg mixture and the flour mixture using a mixer at low-speed or by hand. Beat well to form a thick dough.
• Divide dough mixture into half and shape each half into a ½ inch thick ball. Wrap each ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, till dough is firm.

• Preheat oven to 350° F. Lightly flour a flat surface or board and roll out the dough half. Flatten dough half to ¼ inch thickness.
• Use cookie cutters to cut cookie into shape or shape with hands. Line up cookies on a non-greased cookie sheet. Use other dough half to form cookies likewise.

• Gently pinch cookies at the top of each circle, to form small ears. Decorate cookie with 2 candy corn pieces for eyes and a chocolate chip for a nose.
• Using the tines of a fork, gently scratch the sides of the cookies, under the eyes, to form whiskers.
• Bake cookies for 7 - 9 minutes, until they are slightly firm. Leave them to cool completely.

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 2 ⅔ cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup whole blanched almonds
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 squares melting chocolate
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

• In a mixing bowl, combine egg, sugar, butter, vanilla and almond extracts and beat well.
• Mix in flour, baking powder and salt, beating well with each addition. You can use an electric mixer or beat by hand.
• Refrigerate this mix for 20-30 minutes. Preheat oven to 325° F.

• Remove dough from fridge and scoop out a teaspoon onto waxed paper.
• Shape the dough into a finger shape. Place an almond at one end of the cookie to look like a fingernail.
• Squeeze the cookie finger at the tip and at its middle to give it a more finger-like appearance.

• Line up fingers on lightly greased cookie sheets.
• Bake cookies for 20-25 minutes until they turn golden brown.
• Leave cookies to cool for a while. Melt the chocolate squares to get a thick chocolate paste. Pipe a little chocolate around the almond nail.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup milk
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon milk
• Powdered sugar

Directions

• Combine all ingredients except the powdered sugar in a medium-sized bowl.
• Using an electric mixer, mix the ingredients well at medium speed, until a smooth paste is formed.
• Pour mixture into a squeeze bottle with a narrow opening. Over medium heat, heat a skillet and grease it lightly.

• To form the design, you need to squeeze batter onto the skillet quickly. The first 2 or 3 cookies may look weird but soon you'll form more cobweb-like shapes.
• Now squeeze batter onto hot skillet to form 4 thin straight lines that intersect at a central point (like an asterisk shape).

• Then form a circle at the outer points of the lines and one more towards the central point. The circles should touch all 4 lines.
• Let the shaped batter cook on the skillet for 30-60 seconds on each side, until it is golden brown. Remove from skillet and leave to cool.

• Preheat oven to 325° F. Line cookies on a non-greased cookie sheet and bake for 5 - 7 minutes.
• Remove from oven and leave to cool completely. Lightly sprinkle powdered sugar on cookies and serve or store in an airtight container.

When baking cookies, chances are you have young helpers, anxious to aid and taste. So instead of involving kids in the mixing and baking process, why not leave the cookie decorating and icing to them. The following are some cookie decorating ideas:

Instead of using the cobweb recipe mentioned earlier, you can decorate baked sugar cookies with icing. You can decorate the cookie surface with black icing as a base and then pipe on white icing in the shape of a spider's web.

Zombies can be made, by first filling the cookie surface with green icing and then using red icing for flesh wounds.

Kids can get really artistic by using black and green icing for a scary, bold effect with skull, monster and other ghoul faces on cookies. Then garnish with licorice drops, candy corns and assorted candies.

Use plain chocolate chip cookies for this gruesome cookie idea. Melt white chocolate and dye it red, using food coloring. Dip a small part of the top of the cookie into the dyed chocolate and then invert it, such that the chocolate drips over the cookie. You now have dripping bloody cookies.

Decorating cookies may seem a bit difficult and very messy in the beginning, but after a few trial runs, you'll be decorating like a pro. Try to reduce the amount of icing used by being smart with your choice of cookie ideas.

For example, making white ghosts and cobweb cookies, means a lot of white icing will be needed. If you cannot bake the cookies from scratch, then try to get ready-made cookie dough to cut down on the cooking process.