Halloween baking - Monster Alien Cookies!

      

Halloween has fast become my second favourite excuse to decorate the house and go a bit nuts in the kitchen. I know its very much viewed as an 'American' holiday and an excuse for shops to cash in etc etc. but in my opinion, its another way to celebrate and enjoy this time of year. Autumn is and forever will be my favourite season and taking the time to decorate the house with pumpkins and autumn wreaths (Sienna made me the most gorgeous wreath with her nanny magic on Monday) I really think should be something people make more effort to do.

 

I think since having children Halloween has become something I like to make a bit of a fuss of. We decorate the house and carve pumpkins and I love making a little halloween tea for Sienna and making lots of yummy treats in the kitchen together. I can't wait until Florrie is big enough to join in with the mess and chaos.

Today marks the midway point of our first half term of Sienna being at proper school. I asked her what she would like to do today and she simply replied 'bake something with you mummy'. Now there aren't many times my daughter calls me a genius, but today was one of those rare occasions. I suggested we dig out my old box of cake decorating things and make some alien cookies with crazy eyes. I mean what 4 year old doesn't love the idea of playing around with a box of food colouring and alllllllll the cake glitter? She couldn't wait to get started. 

These really are so very easy to make, and because they're 'crazy monster aliens' (quote Sienna) the messier and uglier the better.

I used the base recipe of my plain vanilla Reeces Peanut butter cookies for these and added some white chocolate chips. They're then drizzled with more white chocolate once cooled and I promise you you'll be lucky if they last an hour once you're finished. You don't have to stick to the vanilla recipe - if you prefer chocolate you can always make them that way and decorate with the white chocolate and add eyes so they look like Mummy's..

They're one of my favourite things i've baked with Sienna in a long time, we had so much fun and I hope you do too! 

Enjoy 

E x

For the Cookies

• 125g Cold Butter
• 125g Caster Sugar
• 250g Plain Flour
• 1 Egg
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 75g White Chocolate Chips, 25g Kept aside for the googley eyes
• Gel food colouring of your choice, We chose bright green!

For the Decoration

• 1 bag of White chocolate buttons, We used Tesco's 70g bag
• 1/2 packet of dark chocolate chips
• 100g White chocolate
• Powdered food colouring, this is available in most cake shops or online. If you don't have this available then colouring some plain white icing will work fine.

Pre-heat the oven to 180c and line a baking tray with parchment. 

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the egg and beat until combined. Sift in the flour and mix thoroughly, then add the vanilla extract and the chocolate chips. Now add your desired colouring to the mix until you have a soft ball of dough. Drop balls of the dough onto the prepared baking tray and flatten them until theyre about the thickness of a pound coin, they wont spread much during baking so make them as big or as small as you like. We made 8 big cookies! 

Bake in the centre of the oven for 10-12 minutes. Once cooked allow to cool completely.

Whilst the cookies are baking. Take the chocolate buttons and lay them out on a chopping board lined with baking parchment. Melt the 25g of white chocolate that was kept back and dot each chocolate button with enough to hold a plain chocolate chip in place - making googley eyes! Allow these to set. 

Once the cookies have cooled, melt the white chocolate and drizzle half over the cookies. With the remaining half, colour with your chosen powder colouring (or colour your icing if thats what you're using!) and drizzle this over the cookies. Add your crazy eyes and allow the chocolate to set before letting your own little monsters munch them all up :) 

x