Published: October 26, 2007 04:00 pm            

Ghouls rule Halloween baking

There has been a decided chill in the air lately — the days are getting shorter, and in some places leaves are starting to drop from the trees. Fall is clearly here, which means Halloween is just around the corner.

Terry Cervantes says Halloween is the first real “baking holiday” of the season. It’s the time of year when kids are clamoring for hot, tasty fresh-out-of-the-oven treats. It’s the time of the year when parents and kids can let their imaginations run wild and whip up delicious and fun Halloween snacks.

Cervantes, the owner of The Cake Emporium in Joplin, Mo., said fall is the perfect time for baking.

“Partly it’s the changing weather, and partly it’s because Halloween is such a great time for family and friends to get together,” she said. “It really is the start of the holiday season.”

Cervantes said Halloween signifies the start of the busiest time of the year at her bakery. It’s a time for cookies and pies. It’s a time for apples, pumpkins, spices and nuts. Homemade baked goods start to replace homemade ice cream. And it’s easy, she said, to take a simple, basic recipe and turn it into a Halloween treat.

Her Halloween cut-out cookies are really just your basic sugar cookies dressed up a little bit.

For starters, Cervantes uses Halloween-themed cookie cutters to cut pumpkin, bat and ghost shapes. Once the cookies are baked, she uses colored icing (she likes to use a mixture of royal icing and butter cream) and air brushes little designs to complete the Halloween makeover. Although holiday cookie cutters are generally inexpensive and easy to use, Cervantes said they are not essential to making her Halloween cookies.

“If your children are old enough, you can let them cut out the shapes using a butter knife. Or you can make pumpkin-shaped cookies using the bottom of a glass to press out the dough,” she said.

Cervantes’ Halloween cupcakes are also basically just a twist on an old standard. She simply makes normal cupcakes but ices them with a creamy white frosting, adds orange sprinkles to the sides and tops them with plastic white ghost figures.

“Really, all you need to make neat Halloween treats is an imagination,” she said.

Cervantes said Halloween is a great time to let children get involved in the baking process. Whether it’s cutting cool ghost and goblin shapes out of cookie dough or spreading gum drops and candy corn on top of cupcakes, any child can take part in the joy of cooking, she said.

“When I did daycare, we used to make cookies and give the children Popsicle sticks and little cups of icing and let them decorate the cookies. Of course, some of the children just ate the frosting,” she said with a laugh.



Mike Pound writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe.





Baker Terry Cervantes offered the recipes she uses for her Halloween cut-out cookies and pumpkin squares.



Halloween cut-out cookies

1 pound, 4 ounces butter

4 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

10 cups flour

Cream together the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Then mix the baking powder and salt with the flour and add flour to the cream mixture until it forms a stiff dough. Roll out dough and cut into favorite Halloween shapes. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for nine to 10 minutes or until edges of cookies are golden brown. Decorate the cookies with icing, colored sprinkles or candy.



Favorite pumpkin squares

2 1/2 sticks butter

3 cups sugar

1/8 cup of vanilla

1 (29-ounce) can pumpkin

7 eggs

3 1/2 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

Mix butter and sugar with mixer until light and fluffy. Blend in pumpkin and eggs. Mix in dry ingredients. Spread onto a greased sheet pan and bake in preheated 325-degree oven for 25 minutes.



Cream-cheese icing for pumpkin squares

1 1/2 pounds cream cheese (room temperature)

1 pound butter (room temperature)

3 1/2 pounds powdered sugar

Mix will with blender. Then beat two minutes until fluffy.

        

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