I burned weekend nights just rushing out this year's Halloween cookies. & there's nothing but bad planning to blame. My horrible planning. Somehow, my brain decided that 2 weekends before Halloween was too early. Somehow, my brain thought I was some superhero that didn't require sleep. Eitherways, I've learned my lesson. And so, here's next year's plans.
Well, ideas for the Halloween sugar cookies that is.
This year's Halloween cookies turned out a lot more pastel than vibrant. Reason being that the last time I did royal icing (RI) was last year, for the 2012 Christmas cookies. It's been about 10 months since. And I faintly recall the colors developing to a few shades darker and more vibrant after it dried. Yet somehow, this year's colors didn't seem to develop as I thought they would. Curious huh? Wells, I don't know why but what the hay.
One thing about my royal icing, I never saw a reason to use clear vanilla extract for white royal icing. Because my white icing always turns out really white! I mean, look at that!
Although, it didn't look white when I mixed in the vanilla water (vanilla essence/extract mixed with water). But after mixing for a couple more minutes, the royal icing gradually turned white that was fit for ghosts! *grins*
After the white RI on the ghosts bodies (the nothingness is technically their body right?) was dry (I left them to dry overnight), because of the lack of space/containers to dry the iced sugar cookies, I made a fatal mistake. I left the smaller witch hats to dry on top of the perfectly white ghosts!! Can you imagine what scars that left behind for the ghosts?! The oil/butter/fat from the witch hats seeped into the (ghosts) white royal icing! So the perfect ghost white had this yellowed-out witch hat oil stain looking scar on its ghostly body. *sigh*
To all who reads this and was thinking of attempting royal icing in humid Singapore, please remember to keep your cookies protected from each other! & yes, I have to dry my cookies in airtight containers or I'd have soft cookies because they "lao hong"-ed. *sigh*
Here's some completed witch hats! I realized I can make black icing by simply making chocolate royal icing (use loads of cocoa powder!)
I have a bottle of Wilton's black gel coloring, but it doesn't quite make my icing black. I recall having to use a whole 1/4 tsp worth just to get my cocoa powder mixed royal icing to turn black. That's too much food coloring. It makes me cringe just thinking about it. *shudders*
Thankfully, the witchy fingers didn't need any food coloring. Their only make up was an egg white wash and cocoa powder (a blanched almond too if you think of it as a falsie - fake nail). Muwahahahahaha ~ !
Once the cookies are all decorated and have their falsie nails on, they were marched / floated (for the ghosts, heh) into the halloween gift bags. Sadly, I didn't manage to get DAISO's bigger halloween gift bags. Witch fingers are too long for the small gift bags. As such, the gift bags wound up looking rather lopsided while carrying a very high risk of broken bones (witch fingers in this case).
The gift bags still look rather cute though. With a pumpkin looking as though it's chomping on the cookies.
Imagine having a black cat sugar cookie in there. *laughs*
Oh, I tried to make various designs/faces for the cookies (at least, the ones that were gonna get faces on them). So here's a photo of a uni-brow ghost and a very happy pumpkin because it has eyebrows! (but no nose.. hmm..)
That's all for this year's Halloween cookies.
Excuse me while I go get the door. I believe there are trick-or-treaters waiting for some sweet treats! (=^･ω･^=)
Happy Halloween!
