Halloween is not at all complete without a spell book, and lucky for all of us, I conjured up this one just in time. A few weeks ago my crafty sister-in-law was working hard on replicating the spell book from Disney’s Hocus Pocus. Her completed creation was absolutely FANTASTIC! I was astonished really and just how good it was (not that I doubted her! I know her to be creative. I was just impressed at how good the book came out!) So after seeing her completed work of art, it got me thinking that I should do my own DIY project…in cookie form of course! And here we are!
Now there is A LOT OF DETAIL in this cookie. It can be complex for some, and easy for others. Regardless, if you find you are having difficulty visualizing what I am trying to explain, or if I just don’t make much sense, head over to my Gallery where you can find a quick video on how I made this cookie. Also, never hesitate to send me a quick email (sharon@thedessertpantryla.com) if you have any questions. I am happy to help you do your best to make this cookie a reality! I WANT you to display these are your Halloween par-tay and show them off to family, friends, or co-workers! My goal is to make you the Top Halloween Cookie Creator of your town!
Now the tools of the trade for this project include:
- CookieCutterKingdom Rectangle Plaque Cookie Cutter- Sugar cookie dough (CookieCutterKingdom recipe here)
- Royal icing (CookieCutterKingdom recipe here)
- Flood consistency in brown, gray, and white
- Medium consistency in black and gray
- Americolor gel food coloring– brown, black and green
- Tipless piping bags
- Thin paint brush
Directions:
You will want to start by baking your cookies and allowing them to cool. Once the cookies are cooled, begin preparing your royal icing. To save myself time and keep the desired consistency the same, I usually opt for one large batch. I then separate the amount dependent upon the desired color I want. I used Americolor gel color brown for the book itself, and just a tiny bit of black on the flood consistency royal icing to achieve the gray color. For my medium consistency royal icing, I used a tiny bit of black as well to achieve the gray color (this medium consistency you will use for the detailing). Place your different royal icing into the tipless bags and we should be ready to go!
Begin with flooding the cookies with brown royal icing. Let the royal icing set for a few hours before proceeding to detailing. Typically I wait about 4 to 6 hours because this ensures the royal icing I use for detailing won’t ‘bleed’ into my base royal icing. Once the first layer has set, you will use your gray flood consistency royal icing to add the book spine and rounded corners to the cookie.
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Next, use your gray flood consistency royal icing and draw an oval around ‘the eye.’ Make sure to give yourself enough space between the gray icing and the ‘the eye’ because we still have to create the eyelids. Let this section set for at least two hours.
Next, take your brown flood consistency royal icing and draw the wiggly lines. Then take your black royal icing and trace those same brown lines with the black. Let that set for about an hour.
Allow the brown wiggly lines to crust over (about an hour or so), and then we can begin working on the ‘stitches.’ Take your brown royal icing, and begin creating stitch marks as shown below. They don’t need to be perfect since we are making them look like stitches, so try and create them in different directions so give the illusion.
Once your cookie book gray spine and corners are set, you will need your gray medium consistency royal icing to draw your snake details. You can see here how I drew my snakes out. For the book spine, I started with a circle and then drew a wiggly line towards the opposite side. For the rounded corners, I envisioned a snack coiled within itself with the head sticking out, so I replicated that as best as I could. Feel free to use your scribe tool or toothpick to move around the royal icing while it is still wet to best look as you want it to. Once you are happy with the shape of yours snakes, take your black royal icing and place two dots on the snakes’ heads to represent its eyes.
At this point you are almost done! (THANK GOODNESS!) If you have made it this far and are not cursing me yet, YAY! Our cookie is basically made at this point and staring back at you waiting for those final details. What is it you ask? Well, the eye of course! Using your brown royal icing, begin tracing eyelids onto your cookie eye. Depending on whether you want the eye to be open or closed will depend entirely on you! If you want to achieve the open look, than place the brown icing on the eye but leave enough room so we can ‘color’ it in.
If you are opting for the closed look, than just use the brown royal icing to complete cover up the eye. As the brown icing begins to harden, take your scribe tool or toothpick and carefully trace a line through the icing from one end to another creating the separation from top to bottom of the lids. Be very careful not to roughly drag it across because you could pull away chunks of royal icing, or penetrate all the way to the eye itself and drag some of that icing to the top. So just be very careful if you are going for the closed eye look.
If you opted for the closed eye, than you are done!! Just give your cookie a few hours and you should then be ready to serve them up to your ghouls...I mean guests!! If you went for the open eye, we have one final detail ahead of us…
Taking your thin paint brush, dab the tip of the brush into clear vanilla extract or almond extract. Then take the smallest amount of Americolor green food coloring and every so lightly tough the tip of the food coloring to your paint brush. Then lightly and carefully paint the eye of your cookie. Let your cookie set for a couple of hours before serving to your guests. And that’s it! You made your own Halloween cookie spell book!!
I hope this tutorial was easy for you to use. Please feel free to let me know how you liked it, and if you have any other creative desserts you would like to know how to make!