Sunday, November 10, 2013

Halloween Fingers - How I do it

Each year for Halloween I make creepy looking fingers.  I have seen some people call them witch's fingers.  To me, it's the same thing.  Something edible for Halloween, but almost too creepy to eat.



This year, I took pictures along the way so you could see the progress as I went through each step.

The cookie dough is nothing more than a shortbread cookie recipe.  Sugar, flour, butter, Vanilla extract & some Almond Extract.  Nothing fancy here!  Oh, and I did add some cinnamon, blanched almonds & slivered almonds in strategic places.  More on that later.

And here's how I did it.

I started out with a spoonful of dough and rolled it into a log between my hands.  I had to adjust the amount of dough I used, but I finally had the 'eye' for it and turned out some consistent shapes.

Now I have added the blanched almonds.  All you need to do is take a handful of raw almonds (with skin on) boil them in water for a little while, drain, slip the skin off and split them.  They have this nice pasty white coloring, with ridges and some of them are a bit chipped too.  Perfect!

Here I have added the knuckles.  Just take a knife and make 3 slashes in the cookie for each knuckle.  They are really starting to look like fingers now.

A close up

Halloween fingers can't dig their way out of graves without getting dirt on them can they?  I brushed cinnamon on them to give that dirt appearance.  And I'm not even done yet....

Another close up

Slivered almonds.  What do you use them for?  I'll betcha don't use them as bones coming out of the fingers. (Presumably when they were ripped off the hand)  I couldn't use all the slivered almonds as I had to pick the longest ones.  The leftovers will go in a stir fry or something.

Well, they don't look like actual bones, but close enough.  We don't want to get too realistic here.

A little red food coloring and Voila!  It's starting to get creepy.

Here they are before I put them in the oven for baking in all their creepy glory.

They flattened out more than I wanted, which indicates I didn't have enough flour in the recipe.  Something I'll have to keep in mind for next year.  On the positive side, they almost look like they are decomposing.

The red you see around the fingernails was red frosting I put on the fingers before I baked them.  It turned out nicely, so I'll probably do the same thing next year.

Another closeup for you

Overall it took me about 2 hours to do this.  If you are making these cookies with someone else, it shouldn't take as long.

They were a big hit at work, and as usual I had some left over at the end of the day because the majority of people couldn't bring themselves to eat the fingers.  My husband didn't have a problem eating them, but since he's retired from the US Marine Corps, it doesn't surprise me.