Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Cooking with Skulls: Sweet, Frosted Dia de Los Muertos-Inspired Treats


Greetings, my halloweenies! All right, technically we're post-Halloween here, but I made the delicious treats shown above for my coworkers and took them in on the day itself, so we'll go with it. Just a quickie drive-by blog entry to show off some of my latest holiday handiwork! More new entries are coming as soon as I can catch up (I've been cooking up a storm over here).

For now, please enjoy the Dia de Los Muertos-inspired (Mexican 'Day of the Dead') sugar cookies I made for Halloween this year, inspired by the hyper-decorated traditional sugar skulls made in Mexico. The cookie base is from Alton Brown's recipe for rolled sugar cookies, and like every other recipe with his name on it, it is absolutely flawless (with one small caveat: go ahead and double the amount of salt he calls for. It's an adjustment you don't need to feel guilty over, since you're only going from 1/4 teaspoon to 1/2, and the difference it makes in terms of the flavor is astronomical). His recipe quotes a yield of 3 dozen; I used a slightly larger cookie cutter (4" x 3") and got about 30 cookies.




Frost with plain white icing of your choice, then decorate as garishly as you dare. I'm partial to colored gels, star-shaped sprinkles, and of course, a 'more is more' approach. Feliz Dia de Los Muertos, everyone!


1 comment:

  1. These look really good!

    I've actually never tried an Alton Brown recipe before, although I do like his show. I guess now's the chance to change that! Maybe I could do little turkeys for Thanksgiving or something :)

    ReplyDelete