hello kitty jack-o-lantern spice cookies

It's Halloween! So I thought I would show you these Hello Kitty jack-o-lantern spice cookies that are in my new book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book! 

I originally made these a few years ago, when I got the idea to make cookies that looked like the jack-o-lanterns we had carved for Halloween. So when I was working on recipes for the book, I of course had to include a version of these cookies, as well as a few other Sanrio characters!

So I also made Keroppi ..

... and Badtz-Maru ...

... and Chococat!

Aren't they cute? :) You can get the recipe for the spice cookies, as well as the royal icing, in my new book! 

Happy Halloween!

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!

halloween cupcakes - pumpkin cupcakes with browned butter cream cheese frosting

A few weeks ago, I had signed up to make pumpkin pie for Matthew's preschool class Halloween party.  I had envisioned making cute individual mini pumpkin pies instead of one large pie.  But when Halloween week rolled around, I was more in the mood to make cupcakes!  So I decided to make pumpkin cupcakes instead.

I found a nice Martha Stewart recipe for the cupcake, and it came out tender and moist, with just the right amount of spices to enhance the pumpkin.  For the topping, I upgraded my favorite cream cheese frosting by adding some browned butter, just to give it a nuttier taste, and in the end the flavors of the frosting and the cupcake married quite nicely.

To go with the Halloween theme, I made my frosting look like spiderwebs:

I was originally going to pipe spiders on top of the webs too, but spiders really gross me out, and I don't want to even think about eating them!  So instead I piped a happy jack-o-lantern on top.

Happy Halloween!