Happy Halloween (sort of?)!!

I have not posted on here in QUITE a while, but that's because I have joined the working world.  I am now a teacher in a kindergarten classroom as well as an after school supervisor.  I am still crazy busy, but because of hurricane Sandy I have a lot more time on my hands.  I decided we could use some Halloween cheer around the apartment, and decided to bake some cookies.  I started with making my standard sugar cookie recipe:

Pre-heat oven to 375.  Melt 1 cup butter into a bowl, add 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, and 1 egg to the butter.  Mix completely.   In separate bowl, mix 2 3/4 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp baking powder.  Add dry mixture to butter mixture gradually.  Mix completely.  Take a spoonful of dough roll it into a ball and press it flat (about 1/4 inch height) onto the cookie sheet.  Bake one tray at a time for 5-6 mins (depending on your oven).

Now for the fun part!
On half of the cookies I pressed them into orange sprinkles for a simpler Halloween look.  For the other half I made vanilla butter cream frosting (recipe below), and dyed it orange with food coloring.

Buttercream frosting:
Take 1 stick of butter out of the fridge several hours before you are going to use it).  Let it soften completely (but don't melt it in the microwave).  Beat the butter in a bowl until it is smooth.  Add about 4 cups of confectioners sugar (depends on how thick you want it), 1 tbsp vanilla, and about 3 tbsp cream or milk (ideally 2% or whole milk).  The milk will blend into the sugar quickly, so be careful not to add too much.  Blend that mixture completely, and dye it whatever color you'd like.

Now for the spider webs!
Your icing should be pretty thick.  Take a ziplock bag and spoon the frosting into it.  Cut a VERY small piece off of the corner of the bag.

Make a line across the center of the cookie.

Make another line perpendicular to the first, but stop at the middle.  Skip over the middle and continue on the other side.  If you make lines all on top of each other the frosting at the center of the cookie gets to be really tall.  

Continue making lines until there are 8 lines all meeting in the center.  

Connect the lines by using little dips of frosting.  Go slow on these because you want the frosting to be even.  

Connect All of the lines together around the center.










Do the same thing around the outter edge of the cookie. 

Ta Da!!  A lovely Halloween treat!