Happy Halloween! This year has been a very busy one so far and with that I have had limited time to brainstorm new ideas and recipes to share. I could not pass up sharing some Halloween delights with you so I whipped up these vampire bat cookies with my oldest daughter.
To make these you will need a bat cookie cutter, your favorite sugar cookie recipe, 1 box royal frosting mix (such as Wilton’s), piping bags (I prefer disposable for easy clean up), 3 round #2 piping tips, and gel food coloring (black, white, & orange).
First, prepare your cookie dough or buy cookie dough and cut into bat shapes. Bake and allow to cool completely. Meanwhile, prepare the royal icing to stiff but pipable consistency and seperate into portions, 2 larger portions for white and black, and a smaller portion for the orange (as you will use much less). Dye each portion with food color and allow to rest at least 4 hours. For the blackest black I allow mine to sit 24 hours for the color to fully develop, otherwise you will end up with gray bats or you will have squid ink by adding too much dye to the icing.
Once the icing has developed and the cookies have cooled completely begin decorating your bat cookies. Pipe an outline around the bats in black to prepare the cookies for flooding. Set aside a bit of 20 second (stiff) black royal icing for detailing later then make the remaining black icing into flooding consistency by adding water. You will be at the right consistency when you can draw a line through the icing and by the time you count to 10 the line has disappeared. Flood the bats with black icing and allow to set. I allowed mine to set overnight to prevent the black color from bleeding to my white icing details but if you do not have that long to wait ai recommend you at least wait 6 hours but preferably at least 12. Much of it depends on your climate and humidity levels as to how fast your icing will set.
Once the black icing has dried and set you can pipe face details on the bats in white icing. I had my oldest daughter help me so ours vary between male and female bats. She wanted cute eyelashes for the female bats but you can decorate .them however you please. Allow a few minutes for the white to set then pipe the wing details in orange. To give depth to the eyes use the reserved black stiff icing to pipe an eyeball. Once all is dry you will have cute vampire bat cookies that adults and kids can both enjoy! Have a fun and safe Halloween everyone!
Honeybee's Patisserie 