Chocolate Skeleton Cookies (Perfect for Halloween!)
A festive recipe for ‘Chocolate-Cinnamon Skeleton Cookies,’ perfect for a Halloween celebration. The base of this treat is a rich, dark, spiced cut-out cookie flavored with Dutch-process cocoa and ground cinnamon. The dough is chilled, rolled out, and cut into gingerbread man shapes. After baking, the dark-colored cookies provide the perfect canvas for decorating with a simple, white royal icing made with meringue powder. The icing is piped on to create the detailed design of a skeleton, including a skull and bones.
Ingredients
- For the Cookies:
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- For the Icing:
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 tablespoon meringue powder
- 1 to 2 tablespoons water
Instructions
- Make the Cookie Dough: In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar on medium-high speed for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla until creamy.
- On low speed, gradually add the flour mixture and beat until just combined.
- Divide the dough in half, pat each piece into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour until firm.
- Cut and Bake the Cookies: Roll out each dough disk between two sheets of parchment paper to 1/4-inch thickness. Refrigerate the rolled dough for 2 hours until very firm.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Using a 4 1/2-inch gingerbread man cookie cutter, cut out shapes from the chilled dough and arrange them 2 inches apart on the prepared pans. Reroll the scraps and cut out more cookies.
- Refrigerate the cut cookies on the pans for 15 minutes.
- Bake for 15 minutes, switching the pans halfway through, until the cookies are set but still soft. Let them cool on the pans for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Make the Icing and Decorate: Beat the confectioners’ sugar, meringue powder, and water with a mixer on high speed until smooth and thick. Transfer the icing to a resealable plastic bag and snip off a tiny corner.
- Pipe the outlines of skulls and bones onto the cooled cookies. To ‘flood’ the skull, thin some of the icing with a little water and fill in the outline, using a toothpick to spread it. Let the icing set for 30 minutes.
Notes
- This is a classic cut-out cookie recipe that requires multiple, lengthy chilling steps. Chilling the dough is a crucial step to ensure the cookies hold their shape and don’t spread during baking.
- The icing is a simple royal icing that uses meringue powder, which allows it to dry hard and is a safe alternative to raw egg whites.
- The two-step decorating process of outlining and then ‘flooding’ with a thinned icing is a standard technique for creating detailed cookie designs.
Find it online: https://cookupjoy.com/chocolate-skeleton-cookies/