Tag Archives: halloween party treat

Tangy ginger cookies filled with sweet maple cream.  Cut them into fun fall shapes for your Halloween party!

INGREDIENTS:

Cookies:

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup dark molasses
• 2 T. vinegar
• 5 cups flour
• 1 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt
• 2 t. ground ginger
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 t. ground cloves

Maple cream:

• 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
• 1/4 c. melted butter
• 1 t. maple flavoring
• Food coloring

DIRECTIONS:

• Cream together butter and sugar.
• Beat in egg, molasses and vinegar.
• Blend in sifted dry ingredients.
• Chill 2-3 hours (this is important– the dough is very easy to roll after chilling)
• Roll 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch thick on a floured counter or board (thinner is better!)
• Cut dough into small, equally-sized cookies (if you want to make cookies with cute cut-outs on one side, I used Halloween Linzer Cookie Cutters)
• Place on greased cookie sheets.
• Bake at 375 degrees for about 7-10 minutes.  Check often- take out when cookies have risen and are easily removed from sheet.
• To make maple cream, combine powdered sugar, melted butter and a little water until a thick frosting consistency is reached.
• Add maple flavoring (you can add vanilla if you don’t like maple)
• Divide cream into 2 bowls and color as desired with food coloring. (my maple flavoring added a brown tint to my filling, so I just experimented with coloring to reach the shade I wanted– use gels so that you don’t dilute it!)
• Frost one cookie’s back and top with another cookie.  The filling will harden up and make these very easy to store and serve.
• ENJOY!

My thoughts:  These are a really unique flavor.  I love them– ginger and maple– YUM!  The ginger cookies are my grandma’s recipe and they don’t rise much so I thought they’d be perfect for this type of cookie cutter.  Roll them thin though– thicker cookies don’t keep the inside cut-out shape as well.  I’ve never used a Linzer cookie cutter (I’ve no idea how its SUPPOSED to be used-  I will probably read the directions eventually!) but it worked just great with this cookie recipe and these make me smile 🙂