Cooking with Kids: Creepy cookies for the height of spooky season

Toothed monsters of cookies close-up on a table for Halloween. horizontal

Most children have time on their hands over the next week as the school midterm aligns with the Halloween break. 

Cooking and baking can keep them occupied. Decorating homemade cookies or buns will while away an afternoon and have the house smelling delicious. 

Younger bakers can simply bake the cookies and eat them as is, or if you do wish to assemble and decorate with them it is very handy to buy some icing pens. These are available in quite a few supermarkets, specialist baking shops and online.

The chocolate mixture, which is made for the Creepy Cookies, is very versatile. Any excess can be shaped into balls and covered in melted white chocolate to make little spooky ghosts. Use the same icing pen to draw on the eyes and the mouth.

There are other Halloween cookie options too. Butter cookie dough will work well for cutting into shapes because this type of dough does not spread very much while baking. 

The trick is to keep it as cool as possible. You can chill the whole tray of prepared cookies before putting it into the oven to help them keep firm.

Quite a lot of pumpkins get carved over the Halloween period. 

Showing children that some of the pumpkin can be reused is a nice way to start a conversation about food waste. 

After a pumpkin has been carved you can roast or steam some of the flesh and then mash this with a fork. 

Creepy Cookies

recipe by:Michelle Darmody

Perfect for younger bakers amid the swirl of spooky season.

Servings

10

Preparation Time

 40 mins

Cooking Time

 10 mins

Total Time

 50 mins

Course

 Baking

Ingredients

• 200g soft butter

• 50g light muscovado sugar

• 120g caster sugar

• 1½ tsp cream of tartar

• 1 tsp bread soda

• 300g plain flour

• 3 tbsp milk

• 150g dark chocolate pieces

• 150ml cream

• a handful of mini marshmallows

• 1 black icing pen

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4. Cut two squares of parchment paper to fit on top of two large flat baking trays.

2. Whisk the butter, muscovado sugar and caster sugar together until the mixture starts to look fluffy and the colour has become lighter.

3. Place a sieve over a large bowl and put the cream of tartar, bread soda and flour into it. Gently tap the side of the sieve with a spoon and let all the ingredients fall through. Add these to the butter mixture and stir them together with a wooden spoon until completely mixed.

4. Stir in the milk.

5. The aim is to make 20 cookies so when you sandwich them together, you will have ten creepy little monsters. I find it is easiest to divide the dough into two then make ten little balls from each part.

6. Put ten balls onto each of your prepared trays. Press them down slightly. The dough will spread as it bakes so leave a gap between each cookie on the tray.

7. Bake the cookies for about ten minutes until they are golden. Once they are cool enough to handle place them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

8. While they are cooling ask an adult to help you to heat the cream in a saucepan over a low heat. Heat it until it is shivering on top then carefully take it off the heat and stir in the little pieces of chocolate until they melt into the warm cream. Sit the saucepan aside to let the chocolate mixture cool and firm up.

9. Once the cookies and the chocolate are cold, spoon about a teaspoonful of the chocolate icing onto ten of the cookies. Pop the other ten cookies on top to make cookie sandwiches.

10. Make twenty of the mini marshmallows into eyes and stick these onto the top of each cookie sandwich with some of the melted chocolate. Ask an adult to help you to cut some of the marshmallows into triangles and then press them into the chocolate filling to look like teeth.

Activity: Spider web pancakes

Turn your pancakes into a spooky Halloween breakfast by dripping the batter onto your hot pan in the shape of a spider's web. 

Put some pancake batter into a piping bag or squeezy bottle with a tip. 

Ask an adult to heat a flat pan and to melt a little butter on the pan. 

Draw an X onto the pan with the batter then draw a second X so you have what looks like the spokes of a bicycle. 

Link the spokes with drizzles of batter to create a web. 

When the underside is golden gently flip your web over to cook on the other side.