Bat & Ghost Cookies

Ingredients

Gingerbread Biscuits
225g/8 oz plain flour
a quarter  tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 and a half tsp ground ginger
half a tsp mixed spice
50g/1 three quarter ounces unsalted butter
100g/3 and a half ounces dark brown soft sugar
100g/3 and a half ounces Golden Syrup
1 tbsp milk

Icing
8g sachet dried egg white
warm water
250g icing sugar, sifted
black food colouring

black and red Writing Icing

Method:

Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and spices. Heat the butter sugar and golden syrup in a small pan until dissolved, stirring frequently, then allow to cool for 5 minutes.  Stir the syrup mixture and milk into the dry ingredients.  Cover with plastic film and chill for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.  Lightly grease two baking sheets.  Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until about 3mm thick.  Cut out ghost, bat or any other Hallowe’en shapes using cookie cutters.  Use a straw to make a hole in each one if you wish to hang them from a branch.  Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until lightly browned and then cool on a wire rack.

To make the icing, mix the dried egg white to a smooth paste with a little warm water according to the packet instructions.  Gradually whisk in the sifted icing sugar. Colour half the icing black.  Make a small piping bag out of greaseproof or baking paper and pipe around the outline of the biscuits and around the hole.  Pipe the bat biscuits black and the ghost biscuits white.  Thin out the remaining black and white icing with a little water and spread this inside the piped lines.

Once the icing has hardened you can draw some features on the ghosts and bats using black and red Writing Icing.

Thread some thin ribbon through the holes in the biscuits and hang them from twigs arranged in a vase.

MAKES 18 BISCUITS