This is so NOT what I had in mind.
I'm gonna be honest with you. I avoid the cookie decorating. It's funny really because cookie decorating is one of those things that I envisioned a lot when I was imagining what it would be like to be a mama.
Only in THAT vision, there were pigtails and petticoats, patent leather and adoring smiles. Perfect children all in a row, perfect cookies all for show....
And then I became a real mama, with real BOYS, and the very idea of THREE of them plus kitchen machinery, raw eggs, bags of flour and, dear God, food coloring... well just the thought of it wears me out.
So it was a leap of faith, this decision to say yes to the "can we decorate some Halloween cookies?" question.
And of course, it went all wrong. I realized halfway through that I didn't have powdered sugar for the icing. Then only AFTER the store run for the sugar, did I realize that I didn't have orange food coloring (or red to mix with the yellow, thank you) for the pumpkins. So we mixed brown with yellow and got something resembling orange.
I think.
Maybe.
There was a good bit of sibling arguing, and my kitchen is coated in flour, still, hours later. I think the dog might have eaten an icing tip. There were tears when one of the pumpkins, so lovingly made, dropped to the floor. It was scraped clean for a do-over but we only had green icing left so it became a frankenpumpkin.
At one point I even had a child naked and wet, fresh from the shower, rolling on the floor amidst the powdered sugar and flour. Wet, naked, rolling and SINGING an ode to cookies. I kid you not.
And it wasn't even a respectable hour to break out the cork screw.
The whole scene was kind of a disaster.
But, even so, the green pumpkin DID result in a whole bunch of priceless laughter through tears, the very best kind of laughter, I truly believe. The cookies really did taste fantastic. And I kind of have a feeling that one day, when they are grown, and I am an old lady, this whole crazy, mixed up scene will still leave a sweet taste in our mouths.
Life is really kind of like Halloween isn't it?... a little scary, a little sweet and entirely unexpected.
***** If you should be crazy insane enough to want to make cookies too, you might be interested in the recipes that we used.
You can't go wrong with the super tasty, completely delectable sugar cookie recipe found here. It makes a LOT. We divide it into quarters and freeze what we don't use so that we can recreate the cookie decorating joy (ahem) another day.
For frosting we use this recipe, which is exactly the right consistency for spreading and decorating, and hardens up just right as it dries. For the black though, I just buy the ready made stuff in the tubes. I never can get a good black when I make it myself... or a red for that matter. I gave up trying a long time ago and just buy the red and black when I need them.
