As the weather gets chillier outside it’s time to find fun indoor activities, and making cookies for Halloween is the perfect craft to do with friends, family or on your own. The best part?  You don’t have to be a master artist to decorate sugar cookies!

While baking and decorating sugar cookies can bring out your creative side, it is totally okay if they don’t turn out perfectly pretty because they’ll still taste good in the end!

Video comments: this icing is about 7 second icing which is on the thicker side for flood consistency

How to make Halloween themed sugar cookies

To get started, let’s grab our favorite cookie and icing recipe (the one we use here is a banger!), cookie cutters and our decorating supplies. 

You’ll also want at least a little bit of a plan before you start, and Instagram and Pinterest are great resources for finding inspiration ideas if you don’t know what you want to decorate. Classic choices include pumpkins, ghosts, skeletons and spider webs, though you can dream big and be creative – there are so many designs you can do! 

Don’t let your supply closet limit your creativity either; if you don’t have a cookie cutter for a specific shape,  you can always hand-cut your dough! It might sound intimidating, but is actually quite simple; print the shape you want and trace it onto parchment paper; then, cut out the shape and after you’ve rolled out the dough, lay the parchment paper shape on top and use a knife to cut out the shape — voilà!

Making the icing

Following the instructions in our recipe linked above, start by making your cookies and prepping the icing. Considering the designs you’ve chosen, it is then time to color the icing. Food gels such as Americolor or Chefmaster are great for coloring icing as you can get vibrant and rich colors with minimal moisture added to the icing. It is important to color your icing before adding water as this helps prevent over saturation which can lead to color bleed or poor drying. Once the icing is colored it is time to get the desired consistency.  

Icing Consistencies:

• Detail/stiff piping – great for piping details such as florals, leaves or anything you want to hold shape
• Flood – this icing is the thinnest type and is used to cover the entire cookie and create the base to add details to later
• Hybrid – hybrid icing is the middle ground between flood and detail. It is thin enough that it doesn’t hold it’s shape but thick enough to give great puff to details

In order to achieve the consistency you’re looking for, add water little by little and add powdered sugar if you go too thin. Detail icing only needs powdered sugar added to achieve a consistency similar to toothpaste. In order to get your flood consistency, slowly add water and mix frequently. You are looking for icing that will smooth out in 7-10 seconds when you draw a line through the icing. Hybrid icing is noticeably thicker than flood and takes about 15-20 seconds to smooth out after a line is drawn through the icing. Sometimes hybrid icing will be used as the flood for a cookie when a puffy look is the goal – the pumpkin cookie with three sections in the video below  used hybrid icing for the flood to give puffy details which gives more dimension. 

Creating the outlines

Now that all the icing is made, it’s time to decorate! Using a pair of scissors you’ll cut a small hole into your piping bags so you can outline the cookies. 

The first step to decorating a sugar cookie is to outline the cookie with a thin border of icing. This creates a wall, similar to a dam, that prevents the flood icing from spilling over the edges of the cookie. After all the cookies have been outlined, it’s time to flood! Using the scissors again, cut a slightly bigger hole into the piping bag — remember that it’s always easier to go bigger, but you can’t go smaller once you’ve cut! A bigger hole makes it easier for more icing to come out of the bag. 

Flooding the cookie

When you flood the cookie, start at the outline and work your way to the middle. After the cookie is flooded you can use a cookie scribe or toothpick to push the icing around and fill in any gaps on the cookie. You can also pop any air bubbles with the scribe or toothpick. Once the cookie is flooded it needs to dry before you can start adding details. 

During this drying period it is important to not move or bump the cookies. The first part of drying is for the icing to crust over as the outside dries first. In the early stages of drying, a bump could cause the icing to jiggle and not settle smooth, leaving a ripple through the cookie. 

I used flood-consistency icing to make the ghost in this example below!

Adding details

The flood layer takes about 24 hours to completely dry but you can begin adding details long before that. The top crust should be dry enough in a couple of hours and the flood layer will be strong enough to add more details. You can add details with icing or use food markers to complete your designs. After you are done decorating, let the cookies dry completely overnight (or about 24 hours from initial flood) before storing in an airtight container. 

In this video below, I use detail-consistency icing to create the sharp lines in the spider’s web!

With the holiday season just around the corner these cookies are fun for a friend’s night, date night or to prepare as gifts for your loved ones. Any design “mistakes” you make along the way can go into your personal stash of snacks. Be sure to tag us and share your creations!

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All photos courtesy Amy Cornish and Simply Sweet Spokane