Reading with a Bite: Bill and Eric and other Halloween Cookies (Tutorial!)

Here’s the tutorial on how to make these super cute Halloween cookies… or just Bill and Eric cookies.

First, I used THIS recipe to make sugar cookies:

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used 2)
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Make sure your cookies are thick if you plan to insert a sucker stick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

If you use sucker sticks (which allows you to do great looking cookie bouquets) carefully insert the stick before you bake.

Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

While your cookies are cooling, you can start prepping your fondant. I had inspiration and some instruction from this fabulous cake blog recipe.

I bought rolled fondant at wal-mart. I believe it was around 5 or 6 dollars. It was in the wedding/baking aisle. While you are there, you may also want to get brown, black, and orange baking dye.

To make the vampires, you do not need to dye your fondant. Roll your fondant out like you did for the cookie dough, but roll it out as thin as possible! Cut out your fondant with the same cookie cutters:

To dye your fondant, you should probably wear gloves – especially if you are using regular food coloring. (I didn’t have any, so I slipped my hands into plastic sandwich baggies. Ghetto, yes, but it did work). But some drops of food coloring onto your glob of fondant and start mashing and kneading it until the fondant is all one color. This may make your fondant kinda sticky… I’m not sure what you are really suppose to do, but I “floured” my surface and rolling pin with powdered sugar. It makes the fondant kind of powdery, but it stops it from being an ooey-gooey mess.

Roll out your fondant very thinly and cut out with the cookie cutters.

When your cookies are cooled, make your ROYAL ICING. I used THIS recipe and kinda figured it out on my own.

Ingrediants:
Royal Icing Using Egg Whites:
2 large egg whites
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (I didn’t have lemon, so I used lime)
3 cups (330 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

For Royal Icing with Egg Whites: In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the egg whites with the lemon juice. Add the sifted powdered sugar and beat on low speed until combined and smooth. The icing needs to be used immediately or transferred to an airtight container as royal icing hardens when exposed to air. Cover with plastic wrap when not in use.
I beat my eggs until they were frothy:

Then added the powdered sugar and beat them until it was combined and glossy. – I guess the right consistency is when you drizzle the frosting into the bowl and it stays on top for 5 seconds.

I used both a bag with a piping tool, and a plastic baggie with a whole in the corner – both worked fine for me. I did the white frosting first.

First I put a think coating of frosting on the back of all the fondant pieces so that they would adhere to the cookie:

I stuck them on the cookies then I did the white details.
I piped the edges of the vamp cookies and did the whites of the Frankenstein eyes.

I then mixed small separate bowls of orange (for the pumpkins), green (for the Frankenstein’s), black (for hair, eyes, and mouths), and a little bit of yellow (for Eric’s hair). I put them all in plastic baggies. I finished the details of the other cookies and colors.