Mummies and Pumpkins and Cats, Oh My!
Happy Halloween!! For as long as I can remember, Jennifer’s favorite holidays were Halloween and Christmas. She currently has our house decked out in spider webs, caution tape, and other Halloween decorations. I’ve never lived in anything but an apartment as an adult so I’ve found it’s nice to really have the option to decorate outside. This is also the first time that we have really taken the time to get to know the neighbors. Mom calls Jennifer the Neighborhood Watch. She knows everyone! And their spouses. And their children. And their children’s children… ok maybe not that last one. We decided that we wanted to make the neighbors some Halloween cookies.
I knew that I wanted to make mummies because they’re the cutest! After that we let Winter decide. She is obsessed with cats so no surprise that was the first thing she picked. And pumpkins! For obvious reasons.
A few years ago while I was working at an apartment complex in Austin I made a huge amount of these mummy cookies for my residents. We decided to roll with the same recipe I used as well. Here’s the thing…we took a short cut. You’re going to see it in the next photo and down in the recipe anyway so I might as well confess to it now. We used store bought cookie dough for this!
I hope you’re not judging me too hard. Jennifer and I both bake. Both love to bake, but sometimes baking with a three year old is a lot. She’s. Just. So. Helpful.
We started by measuring the cookie dough and flour. If you’re against using your hands you could use a pastry blender to combine. I got in there with my hands. Just a note here: double check which measuring cup you’re using. Seems simple right? I used a 1/3 cup instead of a 1/4 cup today. It might’ve been the first time I’ve done that ever. Easily corrected by adding some extra cookie dough.
Flour your surface well. We keep a little bowl of extra flour next to our work station while we’re baking for this.
The dough should come back together after a minute. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough. You are looking for it to be a 1/4 inch thick. We started with our cat cookie cutter. Cut as many of your shape as you can then roll out your dough again for additional cutting until you’ve used all of your dough.
After baking we let all of our cookies cool completely before we started any decorating.
Meow! For the cats we used a whole bunch of black food coloring until we liked the dark grey we got. (We got to the point that we didn’t think all the black food coloring in the world would actually get these black) We used a fork to create the texture in the frosting and royal icing for the nose and whiskers.
Mummies are my favorite and these are super cute! I used a piping tip to create the “bandage” lines. We had some extra royal icing so I colored it and added random lines as well. I like the pop of color. And of course EYE BALLS!!
For the pumpkins we used a simple royal icing recipe. A little bit of gel food coloring and we were off to the races.
Mummy Cookies
Mummies!!! These are the perfect treat on Halloween for the neighbors or your kid's school! And they are so much fun to make.
ingredients:
- 1 lb pre-made chocolate chip cookie dough
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 - 12 oz container of ready-to-spread frosting
- candy eyes
instructions:
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl, combine cookie dough and flour with your hands until well mixed.
- On a floured surface, roll dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with a floured circle cookie cutter. Place cutouts 1 inch apart on a ungreased cookie sheet. Reroll dough and cut additional cookies.
- Bake cookies 10-12 minutes until edges are lightly browned. Remove the cookies from the pan. Allow cookies to cool completely.
- Spoon frosting into a decorating bag fitted with a flat basket weave tip. Squeeze bag to pipe frosting in crisscross pattern on cookies to look like mummy bandages. Attach candy eyes and let sit until set.
NOTES:
This recipe yielded 36 1.5 inch circle cookies and 12 medium size cookies.