FHE Halloween Cookie Activity

Make these Halloween spider web cookies from scratch for a Halloween season Family Home Evening and serve them at your ward activity or offer them at the door to trick-or-treaters.  Then add this to your favorite Halloween recipes.

Make sugar cookies ahead and freeze them to ease your preparation time for your chosen Monday night. Use the sugar cookie recipe that follows and cut out 3” circles with a biscuit cutter or drinking glass.

Halloween Cookie Recipe

Sugar Cookies (in 3 sized batches = normal, large, huge)

Cream together:

Butter or margarine                        3/4 cup                1 ½ cups              2 1/4 cups

Sugar                                                  1 cup                    2 cups                   3 cups

Eggs                                                    2                            4                            6

Vanilla or almond flavor                1 tsp                     2 tsp                     3 tsp

Sift together:

Flour                                                   2 ½ cups               5 cups               7 ½ cups

Baking powder                                 1 tsp                     2 tsp                     3 tsp

Salt                                                     1 tsp                     2 tsp                     3 tsp

Blend and chill at least one hour.  Roll 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick on board dusted with flour.  Cut out.  Bake on ungreased baking sheets at 400º for 6 to 8 minutes or until slightly golden.  Freeze, if desired, until you are ready to frost them.

Necessary Ingredients and Supplies

You will need:

Special frosting (recipe below) — this frosting stays glossy, but hardens.

Toothpicks

Plastic spiders (Wash them well.  If they are rings, snip off the ring part and keep the spiders.)

Squirt bottle (like the ones used for ketchup)

Small spoons

The cookies

When you make the frosting, tint most of it orange and a small part of it black.  Put the black frosting in the squirt bottle.

Frosting Glaze for Sugar Cookies — Hardens, but stays glossy

1 lb powdered sugar

1 Tblsp light corn syrup

Dash salt

Water

Colorless vanilla or almond flavoring

Food coloring

Mix together with enough water to form consistency of cake batter.  Stir out any lumps.  Tint most of the icing orange, and part of it black. Put black icing into the squirt bottle.

Cookie Creation During FHE

Cover your table with scratch paper, newspaper, or parchment paper.  Take a cookie.  Smooth orange frosting onto the cookie with the back of a spoon.

With the squirt bottle, make a dot of black frosting at the center of the cookie, then two circles around it, with the outside circle being the widest.

Place the tip of the toothpick on the center dot and drag it to the outside of the circle.  Repeat 5 – 6 times around the cookie, making a web design.

Place a plastic spider on the “web.”  Icing will harden and hold the spider in place.  Once the icing is thoroughly hard, cookies can be stacked.  Freezing will dull the frosting, so it’s not recommended.