Halloween Cookie Pops

The week before Halloween I had an order for cookie wedding favors.  I decided to make some cookie pops for my daughter's daycare with some of the leftover dough and they came out really cute!  I had originally wanted to do some pumpkins and/or ghosts, but creativity and energy had left me as a result of being sick with a sinus infection earlier in the month.  The kids loved them and there weren't any left when I got Sybilla from school that day!

I lucked out in the packaging department with these Halloween bags that magically appeared on my desk at work last year.  Really, I have no idea who left them for me, but someone decided they needed a home and placed them on my desk–and wouldn't you say I found lovely home for them, indeed?

The design was actually very easy to make:

1.  Create a dam from white royal icing around the edge of the cookie.
2.  Flood outline with white royal icing.
3.  Working quickly, create a bull's eye out of black royal icing.
4.  Use the tip of a toothpick to 'pull' the icing from the center of the cookie to the edge.
5.  Allow to dry and eat!

Make a bull's eye or swirl while the flood is still wet, otherwise it won't work!

Then starting from the center, pull the tip of a toothpick through the rings, creating the webbed effect.

Once they're dry, you can make little spiders to sit on them.  I made some from additional royal icing, but you could use small candies too.  I think this technique would be great to use with other colors and other shapes.  The trick is to make sure that you pipe the contrasting color while the flood is still very wet, otherwise, it won't work.  Something else to think about too: use a very small tip to pipe the contrasting color.  I was using a squeeze bottle which had a larger tip and as a result, created really thick bull's eyes.

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

Happy Baking,
Kelly