Spooky Sugar Cookies

So my neice, Taylor, asked me a week ago while I was babysitting her if I had any Halloween cookie cutters. Curiously I said yes, why do you ask? She said because she wanted to bake cookies with me when we were at Gramma's house. Who am I to deny a 5 year old a cookie baking and decorating experience???? My neices are my best kitchen helpers and for the last couple of years we've made everything from cookies to cupcakes to pies to anything they could "help" with...and the older they get the more fun it is to have them in the kitchen with me.

Saturday morning Taylor was up bright and early, ready to get cookin'! So we mixed up the dough (an old school betty crocker sugar cookie recipe from one of my mom's cook books), only to read at the very end that it had to chill for an hour. Panic in the kitchen!!!! An hour to a 5 yr old is apparently multiple lifetimes...60 minutes is an excrutiating amount of time. I heard "is it an hour YET" more times than I can count. Soooo while the cookie dough was chilling, I had to find another activity. So we made soft pretzels (thanks to Amber's Delectable Delights!). Her pretzels were shaped as good as mine by then end of this exercise!

I also brought with me black and orange icing, halloween mix M&M's, Autumn mix dark chocolate M&M's, candy corn and white icing to decorate the cookies. Taylor told me very matter of factly that purple was also a halloween color, so I mixed 1/2 the white icing into a lovely shade of lavender for her. She also got increasingly better at cookie decorating by the time we were done. Good times!