Notice the shy smile this fellow has.

After baking & cooling the cookies, it’s time to decorate them. The cookies are coated with orange royal icing and brownish green royal icing & outlined. Now the fun begins! I have made pumpkin cookies where I tried very hard to get each cookie to look alike, but these are going to be jack-o-lanterns. We all know that each jack-o-lantern is different from all the rest & has its own personality. That’s the intention with these cookies.

Hmmm almost a beatnik look. Remember beatniks? Doobie Gillis anyone?

I loaded the piping bag with brown royal icing & start decorating. As I pick up each cookie, I study it & it seems to tell me what it should look like. Some have faces only & some have hair. A few of them call for beards. Then there are the shy ones that hide behind their glasses. On it goes, until each one is finished. None of them look alike so I’m pleased. Not sure they’re fierce looking, but they definitely don’t look like any cookies my mother would have made.

The more traditional look

Instead of just frosting them & getting the job over, I decided to experiment with 3 different techniques I had seen explained on the internet.

The finished tombstones. Notice the rough edges.

The first ones I worked on were the tombstones. They didn’t take long. I used the offset spatula to frost them. It’s a fast method, but it leaves the edges a bit ragged looking. I’m sure that’s suitable for some times. Gives the cookies a nice home made look.

I worked on the ghosts next. These I needed my icing to be thinner so I add @ 2 teaspoonfuls of water & mixed thoroughly. Outlined the cookies using a #3 tip & gave the outline a few minutes to dry. These I decided to “paint” with icing. This was more time consuming. It did give a more polished look to them though as the edges were nicely defined. I was only partially happy with this method, but I intend to try it again another day. The

The ghosts were outlined & then painted with icing. I used snippets of black licorice for the eyes.

reason I think I was unhappy with it was that my brush was too small. A larger brush would have allowed me to finish the cookies in less time & made it easier to drag the icing where I needed & wanted it.

The rest of the cookies were outlined using a #3 tip. After outlining them, I changed the #3 tip for a #7 tip & filled in the area zigzagging back & forth. If an area didn’t fill in quite right, I used the tip of my brush to push the icing in the direction needed to fill in the cookie. This method worked well & was fairly fast. I would have no problem using this method on a regular basis.

I had picked up several candies to decorate with & varied what I used according to my whim. I had black M&Ms, black licorice whips, red hot cinnamons, red sugar, mixed sprinkles in fall colors & Halloween shaped sprinkles to choose from. It was a pleasant way to spend the morning & we’ll enjoy eating the “tests”.

Pumpkin cookes decorated in various ways. A food decorating marker was used to make the stems.

An assortment of the finished nutmeg cookies.

I’m better prepared this time so hopefully it will go better. A particular favorite cookie here is Aunt Martha’s Nutmeg Bells, a recipe I got from Good Housekeeping several years back. The plan is to mix up a batch of them. While it’s in the refrigerator chilling, we’ll mix up & bake White Chocolate Cookies with Chocolate Chunks. This is a new recipe I’m trying. It can be found in Mrs. Field’s Best Cookie Book Ever, page 15. If you’re into cookie baking, this is a book well worth having.

Zoey hard at work cracking eggs.

We get off to a good start on mixing the cookies. Zoey must be cracking a lot of eggs at home; she does a great job of cracking them. She’s anxious to actually operate the mixer. I’m standing right there so that’s what we do. I tell her what number to move the slide to & she operates it. I suspect we have a baker in the making in Zoey.

The cookie dough is mixed in no time & ready to go in the refrigerator. Here’s where we run into  the first road bump. Zoey is hard to keep focused today. While I clean the mixing bowl, she clamors to play a game on the computer. She doesn’t argue when I tell her no. I point out that she came over to bake cookies not to play computer games.

Zoey carefully carrys the egg to the mixer.

While working on the second batch of cookies, Zoey runs back & forth from the tv to the kitchen. Again, cracking the eggs is a job she handles with finessse. We have the dough ready & I pull out the cookie scoop to use. Zoey says she remembers how to do it & proceeds to use the scoop. She keeps pulling the dough out from the middle of the bowl. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s certainly messier that way so I show her again how to pull the dough from the edges of the batch in the bowl. No biggie as she’s not even 6 & has lots of time to learn all the ins & outs of cookie baking.

She has to kneel in a chair to reach the mixer.

I put the pan of cookies in the oven & set the timer. While the cookies bake, Zoey runs & settles on the couch to watch television. I scoop out a  trayful of cookies to be ready when the first batch finishes cooking. As soon as that batch cools enough to eat, Jim, Zoey & I taste them. Have to be sure they’re good to eat. Zoey pronounces them yummy.

It’s time to scoop another trayful of cookies. She doesn’t seem that interested. Clifford the Red Dog has caught her attention. She’s young & it’s more important that this be a fun process then that she do everything, so I scoop & bake the cookies until all of that variety are done.

Oops! We need to practice spacing our cookies out!

I make the decision to take her home as she’s just not heavily into baking today. Everything distracts her. But it’s been a good day & she’s excited about the cookies she helped bake. She doesn’t ask about cooking the others so I know I’ve made a good decision to take her home.

After taking Zoey home, Sarah & I roll out & bake the nutmeg cookies. I picked 5 of the designs from a new pack of Halloween cookie cutters to use. We cut skulls, pumpkins, devil heads, ghosts & tombstones. Doesn’t take very long to cut & bake them especially beings we’re working together. Tomorrow, I’ll ice & decorate them.

At 6, scooping cookies can be a 2 handed job.

White Chocolate Cookies with Chocolate Chunks cooking on wire racks.