Halloween Cookies - Recipe and Spider Web Icing Tutorial

Making spider web patterns in icing is a really effective way to decorate cookies and cakes for Halloween and they're actually very easy to do, children will love making these too!  Here is a recipe for making some simple shortbread biscuits, flavoured with cinnamon and spices as well as a tutorial on making the iced pattern...

To make the biscuits you will need:
9oz butter
2oz caster sugar
9oz plain flour
4.5oz cornflour
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon

To make the shortbread, first cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.
Sift the flours together with the mixed spice and cinnamon, then add to the butter and sugar.
Bring together the ingredients to form a dough and shape into a thick sausage.  Wrap this in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (or put in the freezer for 15 minutes if you are short of time).
Divide the sausage into 16 equal slices.  Flatten and shape each slice into a circle about 3 inches (7.5cm) across.
Bake in an oven at 170°C / 325°F / Gas Mark 3 for 30-40 minutes, until light golden brown.

Leave to cool on a wire rack, then you are ready to decorate them...

For the icing you need:
icing sugar
water or milk
black food colouring

Make up a batch of white glacé icing with icing sugar mixed with either some milk or water.  You want the consistency of the icing to be spreadable, but not too runny.
Make up a smaller amount of black icing by mixing black food colouring with your icing sugar and a little water.  Then put the black icing in a piping bag with a small round nozzle (if you don't have a piping bag make your own from a greaseproof paper or a small food bag with the very corner snipped off).

It is better to decorate the biscuits one at a time, as you need to make the spider web pattern before the white dries.
First, spread white icing over the biscuit, carefully spreading close to the edges.
With your piping bag, pipe 4 black circles which gradually get smaller in size towards the centre.
Using a cocktail stick, drag through the icing from the centre to the outside edge - repeat this to form the spider web pattern.  I found that 7 or 8 'spokes' looked best.
Leave to dry and they're ready to eat!

If you like this Halloween idea, do come and look at my blog again on Friday - I'll be sharing some more ideas of things you could make this weekend!

Gingerbread Sports People for the Olympics

The Olympic opening ceremony was amazing!  Some of my favourites parts were the cycling doves, the transition from green countryside to industrial revolution and of course the Queen and James Bond!  It's been hard to resist watching the sport on tv all day - so many exciting sports to watch but I need to do some work too!

On the weekend I had fun making these gingerbread sportsmen with my sister (iced while watching the swimming).

We made gingerbread people for sports from swimming to cycling and equestrian to tennis.  Unfortunately there were a few accidents after they left the oven (the horse's tail fell off, the cyclist has a broken back wheel and the tennis player now has a bit of a dodgy shoulder!)


This is the recipe we used for the gingerbread sports people:
10oz (300g) self-raising flour
pinch of salt
3 tsp ground ginger
4 oz (100g) caster sugar
2oz (50g) margarine
3 tbsp golden syrup
4 tbsp milk

Heat the oven to 160C / 325F / Gas Mark 3 and grease a baking tray.

Mix the flour, salt and ginger in a bowl.  Warm the sugar, margarine and syrup and stir together then add to the dry ingredients and stir well.  Add milk and mix to make a firm dough.

Lightly knead the dough then roll out and cut out the people.  I used a little man cutter to cut a basic person shape before adapting to make different sports people.  You can experiment with the cutters you have - my horse was made from a cat shaped cutter!  I pushed one of its ears in to make a bigger head and pushed the tail down to look more horse like.  Other things like the tennis racket, bicycle etc were all moulded by hand.

Bake for about 10-15 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly before carefully lifting onto a wire rack. 

The biscuits were decorated with glace icing (we used yellow, red, blue and green food colouring - as we didn't have any black we mixed a dark purple for one of the rings from red and blue).