How to use royal icing to make ghoulishly cute trick or treater sugar cookies.

Step 1: Supplies You Will Need.

To begin you will need:

Baked and cooled sugar cookies using your favorite recipe.

Royal icing, a good recipe for royal icing can be found here Royal Icing courtesy of Alton Brown.

Food dye

Small frosting tip (#2 is a good size) and piping bags

Cups or bowls for mixing icing colors

Bamboo skewer

New small paintbrush or edible food marker.

Step 2: Creating the Design

Now we will make a werewolf cookie! Since that is my favorite type of monster.

Using your food marker or your brush and food dye, paint your design on the cookies. To get a more uniform look you can use a stencil.

Even though mine will all have different costumes I wanted their faces to match up. So I used a stencil I made out of cardboard to act as my guide.

Tip: Do not use red or black food dye to draw with as it can bleed through the icing.

Step 3: Outline and Flood the Face

Place two small dabs of white icing in the middle of the ears.

Using the piping bag and small tip outline the face. Immediately after, fill it in. The icing will now start to spread out creating the nice smooth look. If you have any air bubbles make sure you pop them using your skewer. You can also gently shake your cookie to help even out the icing.

When smooth let it dry for 15 to 20 minutes.

Tip: Humidity affects drying time so if you live somewhere humid you may need to adjust the drying time or use a dehumidifier in the room.

Step 4: Piping the Hands, Feet and Pumkin

When the face and inner ears are dry, pipe on the brown using the same outline and flood method. You can then do the hands and one of the feet.

When those have dried, pipe on the other foot and the pumpkin and let dry.

Now create one of the pant legs and the pumpkin stem.

After those have dried pipe the final leg and dry.

Note: The drying time goes by quicker than you would think as you will be piping more than one cookie at a time. :)

Step 5: Shirt and Details

Now you will outline and fill in the shirt.

While that is drying you can dot on the eyes.

I then returned with my handy dandy little paint brush and painted the pumpkin's face using black food coloring. You could also paint on the eyes but I just happen to like the raised look created by using icing.

Now that you have finished all the details let the cookies dry overnight.

Step 6: Finished

When they are completely dry you can safely store them in an airtight container separated with layers of wax paper. Or you could use them as party favors by placing them individually in cellophane bags tied with a festive ribbon.

Have a happy Howl-o-ween!