halloween cookies - jack-o-lantern pumpkin spice cookies

I was recently invited to participate in McCormick's Halloween baking blogger contest through KitchenPlay, and since I love baking how could I resist?  For my inspiration, I chose the pumpkin cookies from Peabody of Culinary Concoctions, except that I modified a few things:

• I substituted the cookie mix for homemade sugar cookie dough
• Instead of using a container of vanilla frosting, I made royal icing to decorate it with.
• Instead of adding the pumpkin pie spice to the cookie dough, I added it to the icing.

I also added a jack-o-lantern face, similar to the ones on my Halloween Cupcakes from last year.

After adding a few jack-o-lantern faces, I decided to make cookie replicas of the jack-o-lanterns that we carved with the kids this week!

From left to right - daddy's scary jack-o-lantern, mommy's hello kitty jack-o-lantern, Melodie's classic jack-o-lantern (with a little help from mommy), and Matthew's funny jack-o-lantern (drawn all by himself!)

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!

*** Update:
You can now find my recipe for Hello Kitty Pumpkin Spice Cookies in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!