This year has seemed to fly by and I’m not sure how it’s almost Halloween! We don’t generally do that much for Halloween, maybe an occasional pumpkin carving with friends. I feel like it’d be different if we had kids or even lived in a place that had kids come around trick or treating.
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Since we have neither and this has been a crazy year, I decided I needed to at least bake a fun Halloween treat. These Halloween Sugar Cookies are so simple to make and you can whip them up in no time at all.
Sugar cookies are classic and I figured I couldn’t go wrong with them. I wanted “candy corn” sugar cookies, but I don’t actually like candy corn so I decided to just make them candy corn colors! These turned out to be super cute and a fun way to jazz up some regular sugar cookies. What I love about this sugar cookie dough is that you don’t have to chill it before baking.
How you can customize these cookies
Whenever I need food coloring for a recipe, I always use gel food coloring. Unlike with regular food coloring, gel food coloring won’t add extra moisture and it produces more vibrant colors while using less. You can keep with my “candy corn” theme for the cookies or you could use your own mixture of colors. Purple, green, and black could be fun for a “witch” colored cookie.
A friend recently gave me some fun Halloween sprinkles so I decided to use those as well. If you don’t have food coloring or don’t like using it, this is a great alternative option. Personally, I love sprinkles and love having any excuse to use them. You can use any sprinkle combination you have on hand, they don’t have to be Halloween sprinkles as I know they can be difficult to find right now being so close to Halloween.
The sprinkles add a nice texture to these Halloween Sugar Cookies. The colored sugar cookies are soft and chewy and really don’t need anything added. It really just comes down to your preference and what you have on hand. I wanted to make these as simple as possible while still producing something fun and festive.
What are your Halloween traditions? Do you go all out or are you like us and keep it pretty low key?
Don’t like sugar cookies? Try one of these instead
Chewy Brown Butter Pumpkin Cookies
Chocolate Chunk Skillet Cookie
Halloween Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- yellow and orange gel coloring, see notes
- Halloween sprinkles and sanding sugar, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, add the butter and granulated sugar. Mix on medium speed until smooth and combined, about a minute. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat on medium speed until combined, about a minute.
- Add in 1/2 of the flour mixture and mix on low until just combined. Add the remaining flour and mix until fully incorporated. Being careful to not over mix the dough. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed and at the end to ensure no flour remains at the bottom. Give one final mix if needed to fully incorporate any remaining flour.
- Divide the dough into three equal portions in separate bowls. Add 6-8 drops of yellow gel food coloring to one bowl, 6-8 drops of orange gel food coloring to a second bowl and leave the last bowl plain. Using a rubber spatula, incorporate the food coloring into the dough.
- Take about a teaspoon of each dough and combine the dough by rolling between the palms of your hands.
- If you do not want to color your cookies and want to use sprinkles or sanding sugar instead, pour some sprinkles into a bowl. Then simply form your cookies into balls and roll in the desired topping. If you want the tri-colored sanding sugar look, take about a teaspoon of dough and roll each ball into a different colored sugar. Then combine the dough by rolling between the palms of your hand.
- Place the dough balls on to the prepared baking sheet, leaving about 1 1/2 inches between each ball. I like to look for a side that shows all three colors and have that side facing up.
- Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the edges are slightly golden brown. Do not overbake the cookies, otherwise they will not be chewy. If the center of the cookies look almost set, take them out as they will continue to cook as they are cooling on the tray. Cool the cookies on baking sheet for 3 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Store up to a week in an airtight container on the counter.
Notes
- Feel free to use any colors you’d like to color the cookie dough, I chose to do a “candy corn” looking sugar cookie.
- I have only made this using gel food coloring, I prefer gel over regular food coloring. With gel you can get more vibrant colors with less coloring. Regular food coloring can also add extra liquid to whatever you are coloring, which is not something you always want.
- If you don’t want to color your dough, you can always just roll in some festive sprinkles or sanding sugar.
- These baked cookies freeze well, just make sure they are cooled completely before placing in a freezer bag. Store up to 3 months in the freezer.
If you make any of my recipes, be sure to tag me on Instagram @amysdeliciousmess and use #amysdeliciousmess. I’d love to see all of your pictures!
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