Halloween is one of the most entertaining and colourful celebrations of the year, eagerly awaited by children who, for just one night, can overturn the rules of everyday living, both inside and outside the home.
Sweet treats play a fundamental role in celebrating festival as well as scary masks. Halloween sweets, chocolate and biscuits reign supreme. Here are 2 quick and easy recipes that you can prepare at home as a treat for your kids.
Halloween biscuits: ingredients and preparation
- Scary skull biscuits
- Creepy witch fingers
Scary skull biscuits: recipe and preparation
These are fun skull-shaped hazelnut biscuits complete with pine nut teeth.
Ingredients For 30 scary skull biscuits:
- 500 g plain flour
- Fine table salt (a pinch)
- 1 egg
- 380 g butter
- 240 g sugar
- 1 vanilla pod
- 240 g hazelnut flour
- 30 g pine nuts
Preparation
- Put the plain flour, sugar and hazelnut flour into a bowl and mix with a whisk;
- Add the butter in chunks and mix by hand into a dough;
- Put the egg, salt and vanilla pod seeds into a separate bowl;
- Pour the egg mixture into the dough and continue to mix, then pour out onto a lightly floured pastry board and shape into a loaf;
- Cover the dough with cling film and leave to rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour; then, put the dough back onto the pastry board and roll it out with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 1 cm;
- Cut into circles using a 6 cm biscuit cutter and shape into skulls using your fingers: form the eye recesses and cut out some dough to form a nose. Take some pine nuts and place them under the cut-out nose to create teeth;
- Bake in a preheated oven at 180° C for 20 minutes, then leave to cool and serve.
Creepy witch fingers: recipe and preparation
These quick and easy buttery cookies are ideal for a Halloween celebration.
Ingredients For 20 creepy witch fingers:
- 280 g plain flour
- 100 g butter
- 100 g icing sugar
- 1 medium egg
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- Vanilla pod seeds
- 1 pinch salt
- 20 almonds
Preparation
- Cut up the butter, put all the ingredients - except the almonds - into a bowl and mix them into a ball. Put the dough onto a pastry board and continue to knead until smooth and even;
- Shape the dough into a sausage and cut into 20 sections of around 25 g each;
- Shape each section into a 10-12 cm stick;
- Shape the knuckles and use a smooth blade knife to score some wrinkles;
- At one end, add a brushed almond as the witch’s fingernail;
- Bake the 20 shaped fingers in a preheated oven at 180° C for 20 minutes;
- Leave to cool. The creepy witch fingers are now ready to “grab” your little ones!
