Halloween Spritz Cookies

Why You'll Love These Cookies

• You don't need to be artistic. Choosing which shapes to press, dyeing the dough, and using festive sprinkles goes a looooong way in making cute and easy homemade Halloween cookies.
• They're delicious. Spritz cookie dough is made from simple ingredients and has a buttery rich flavor.
• It's a high-yield cookie recipe. Make lots of cookies in a flash! One batch produces roughly seven dozen cookies quickly.
• Naturally black cookie dough. Black cocoa powder provides a deep, dark color and chocolate flavor, but there's a workaround if you'd rather use food coloring, too.

P.S. Bookmark these Valentine's Day spritz cookies for a few months from now!

Cookie Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you'll need to form orange and black spritz cookie dough. Not pictured are sprinkles, cookie icing, candies, or whichever fun fall cookie decorations you like.

And yes, it's correct that there are no leavening agents (baking powder or soda) used here.

• Butter: These buttery cookies require softened unsalted butter, a texture which is achieved when a spoon or your finger leaves an indent in the stick when pressed with moderate pressure. This can take between 30-60 minutes at room temperature.
• Flour: If not weighing on a kitchen scale, measure by the spoon-and-level method.
• Vanilla extract: Two teaspoons for a bolder vanilla presence in the baked cookies.
• Black cocoa powder: This is the magic in creating naturally black cookie dough. It's a Dutch-process cocoa powder, processed with alkali, that provides its dark color and chocolate flavor (similar to an Oreo). The kind I buy is from King Arthur.
• Food coloring: To make the orange dough. Gel food coloring is recommended over liquid as you'll need less, which prevents the dough from becoming too soft from excess moisture. I just have the base, four-color supermarket set so I mixed red and yellow together, but by all means go for orange directly if you have it.

Step-by-Step Instructions

I've tried to write this recipe for Halloween spritz cookies as straightforward as possible to end up with equal amounts of black and orange cookie doughs from one batch.

All of the specific details are in the recipe card at the bottom of this post, but in short: you will start by making one "base" dough, divide it equally near the end, then add more flour and orange coloring to one bowl, and black cocoa powder to the other bowl.

1. Step 1: Cream together the butter and sugar for 1-2 minutes, until light and smooth.

2. Step 2: Beat in the remaining wet ingredients.

3. Step 3: Mix in 2 cups of flour and salt until just combined.

4. Step 4: Divide the dough into two bowls. Add extra flour and food coloring to one and black cocoa powder to the other.

5. Step 5: Load the orange dough into your cookie press and press shapes out onto ungreased cookie sheets. Decorate at this time if you like.

6. Step 6: Do the same with the black dough then bake at 400°F for 7-9 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack before further decorating.

Choosing Shapes

The Halloween spritz cookie shapes you see throughout this post were made from two sets of disks: the standard set that comes with the oxo cookie press and a third-party fall-themed set. The pumpkin, spider, and owl come from the third-party set, the exact one I unfortunately cannot remember the brand or find for sale anywhere at the moment.

Otherwise - let's get creative with the basic disks!

• Leaves: Great for dusting with sanding sugar or applying candy corn.
• Flowers: Use cookie icing (honestly I bought a bag of Betty Crocker pre-made icing from the baking aisle for these - worked great) to attach candy corn, Mellowcreme pumpkins, candy eyeballs, Halloween-themed jimmies to the center of the flower.
• Tree: Crank out orange trees and use a knife to cut off the stump. Bake the triangles plain, then pipe a horizontal stripe of cookie icing in the center and coat with orange sanding sugar. Repeat the process for the white and yellow sections so it resembles a candy corn.
• Shell: Featured in the oxo cookie press set. I used the black dough and coated the cookies in black sanding sugar before baking. Then once cooled, I flipped them upside-down and applied candy eyeballs to the two little dots that were previously on the bottom to make a "monster".

Fun Decorating Ideas

Depending upon which sprinkles and decorations you choose, you can decorate your cookies before or after baking.

Before Baking

• Sanding Sugar - Sprinkling the corresponding color sanding sugar (orange on orange dough, black on black dough) on these Halloween spritz cookies before baking may be the quickest and easiest way to decorate. Sanding sugar doesn't melt in the oven and makes the cookies sparkle.
• Halloween M&M's - Not pictured here, but a personal family favorite. Lightly press them into the surface before baking.
• Halloween Nonpareils Sprinkles - Can be added before baking. Their colors may bleed a tiny bit, but without sitting in glaze for days (they're my nemesis on Italian anise cookies) they shouldn't be an issue afterwards.

After Baking

• Candy Corn Sanding Sugar - Coat the surface of a stumpless tree with cookie icing and apply white, orange, and yellow sanding sugar to resemble a candy corn. For precision I like to do one section at a time, starting with the middle orange part.
• Candy Eyeballs - Use cookie icing or a little dot of corn syrup to stick these onto cookies to make "monsters", owls, spooky bears, and more.
• Candy Corn & Mellowcreme Pumpkins - Also use cookie icing to apply these after baking.
• Sprinkle Blends - Lots of these out there, from rod-like jimmies in eerie Halloween colors to blends including miniscule pumpkins, ghosts, and bats. These sprinkles often melt when heated, so they're best added after baking. I like to add a glob of icing to the center of a flower and coat it as densely as possible with this type of sprinkle.