Two to three times a month, we host a themed game night, which often includes snacks and drinks as well as a selection of board games that fit the theme. With Halloween quickly approaching, we are pulling out all of the stops and all of the spooky games off our shelves! The zombie cookies and candy corn popcorn were inevitable this Halloween season.
Aunt Chick’s No-Fail Sugar Cookies
Disclaimer: Usually when making sugar cookies, I use my mother’s recipe which was inspired by this one and adapted over many years of experimentation. However, I was unable to find her recipe this year and am posting the one that inspired her creation. You can find tips, tricks, other variations, and the original recipe on the Gramma’s Cutters website as well as a web store to buy all of their wonderful cookie cutters and more!
Ingredients
- 1 cup shortening
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 eggs
- 4 1/2 cups flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla and 1/4 tsp almond
Directions
- Sift together flour and salt. Cream together shortening, sugar, eggs, salt, flavoring, and baking soda. Add the flour mixture to the rest of the ingredients and mix until combined. Add colors if coloring the dough (Note: for the zombie green we used a blend of Wilton Olive Green icing color and a teeny tiny drop of Wilton Burgundy icing color)
- Shape dough into an oval roll and wrap in waxed paper or place in a plastic bag. Chill at least 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Lightly flour both the rolling pin and surface for rolling out the dough. Take out 1/4 or less of the dough while keeping the remaining dough chilled.
- Roll dough into 1/4 – and 3/8 – inch thickness. With a floured cookie cutter, place the cutter on dough and press down firmly with fingers all around edges to make sure the entire edge is cut. Using a spatula, lift both the cutter and dough. Remove the excess dough from around the cookie-cutter before gently pressing the cut out shape free from the cutter.
- Bake cookies for 10 to 15 minutes. Do not allow to brown. Cool thoroughly before decorating.
When decorating your cookies, it is all about having fun! We used icing pens and some of the Wilton Cookie Icings for these, but have also decorated with royal icing, buttercream icing, candies, coconut, chocolate chips and anything else we felt could be fun to put on a cookie.
All photos included in this article were taken and edited by Krista.