Once in awhile it’s fun to make up a big batch of sugar cookie dough, and let the kids go at it with cookie cutters, and a big bowl of royal icing.  It’s worth the mess, and probably something the kids will remember for a long time.

Cookie cutters have really evolved over the last decade or so.  My favorites are still the large copper cookie cutters that turn out huge cookies, but some of the new takes on cookie cutters look like a lot of fun, especially if you have kids or grandkids.

The circus cookie cutters above include a seal, an elephant, a giraffe, a lion, and a tiger.  I like the little pop-out mechanism for getting the dough out of the cutter without messing it up.  Add some sprinkles, and a cardboard circus tent, and these would definitely spark some little imaginations.  I found the circus cookie cutter set at Williams-Sonoma.

Here’s a suggestion for cookie sheets, especially if you have a tendency to over-bake….like me!

Suddenly, eating a kitty cat looks good to me! This was made from one of the cool cookie cutters I found while searching online. It came from Copper Gifts.

Now the dilemma for this and other spooky Halloween cakes and cookies is… how do you make black icing? Beware: it’s not as simple as adding black coloring to your white frosting. You’d have to use so much of it to make it black that it will ruin the taste. Some better ideas include starting with chocolate frosting and adding black coloring, or better yet, black gel coloring. Or you could add Hersey’s Cocoa powder to your white frosting. If you don’t want to mess with mixing, just buy some edible black sparkles. That might be better in the long run because the black icing is sure to turn your guest’s teeth a fowl-looking color. And that would be a real stroke of black cat bad luck!