Jack-O-Lantern Shortbread Cookies

Shortbread cookies are the simplest cookies to make. Only 3 ingredients: butter, sugar and flour. That makes up for the time spent chilling, rolling, cutting and decorating them with icing and candies. I found the perfect shortbread recipe tonight that rendered perfectly smooth dough for a very pretty cookie, well, until we got our hands on them and covered 'em up with junk! I made the cookies. Raquel, James and I decorated them, although James just wanted to eat them without decorating them. So I guilted him into one or two artistic endeavours and then I had to beg him to let me take a picture of him with his creation. I said to him, "I had no idea you had no crafty bone in your body." We laughed. Raquel really enjoyed this activity, too. She made 2 cookies, ate the first one and said the second one was for me.

Just in case you're interested in a tried-and-true cutout-cookie recipe, try this one:

Preheat oven to 325 F

Ingredients:

1 C butter at room temp

3/4 C powdered sugar

2 C all purpose flour

Cream butter until light. Add sugar, and beat until light and fluffy. Add flour til you have a soft dough. I recommend chilling for an hour but you don't have to. Roll dough out to 1/3"-1/2" thickness (pretty thick). Cut out whatever shapes you choose. Place cookies on ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Cookies will still be quite pale in color but delicately golden on bottom. Remove them from the pan and cool 'em down before you decorate.

Oh, and for that orange icing I made, just mix powdered sugar with a tiny bit of milk until you get the perfect consistency to drizzle but not so much that it falls off the cookie. Add whatever food coloring you want, or none at all. It dries pretty quick so you need to add your little sprinkles or whatever right after you get the icing on the cookie. Otherwise, your decorations will just bounce off.