‘Twas the Night Before Halloween – Ghostly Cookies

I like to create a new Halloween recipe for our blog each year. This year I wanted to come up with a new cookie…a ghost or maybe a mummy…and immediately one of my favorite simple meringue recipes came to mind and I wondered if I could tweak it to add a Halloween twist.

For years we have been making my best friend Pamela’s “Bake-While-You-Sleep” Cookies, which her family always made on Christmas Eve when she was a child. The cookies are made the evening before, set into the oven, and then the oven is turned off. The remaining heat in the oven slowly bakes the cookies and they are ready on Christmas Day. While our own family doesn’t personally celebrate Christmas, they have become one of our special holiday cookies as well and I look forward to them each year!

We typically don’t use a lot of sugar in our baking, but these cookies are the exception because I have not encountered another sweetener that works as well in meringues. We used turbinado sugar, which is unbleached and unrefined. Everything in moderation, right?! We put the turbinado sugar (which is typically quite coarse) into a small food processor to make into more of a finely powdered sugar, more akin to the consistency of regular white sugar.

Can’t do sugar? Try our BOO-nana Ghosts or Spooky Spiders instead!

So by adding some eyes and mouths and a “spooky shape” to simple meringues, these cookies transformed into ghostly treats! I named them ” ‘Twas the Night Before Halloween Ghostly Cookies” because the original recipe was always made on the night before Christmas, and I hope you have fun making these with your family on the night before Halloween 😉

‘Twas the Night Before Halloween- Ghostly Cookies
by Debbie Steinbock, inspired by the Houck-Hiivalas

Ingredients:
2 egg whites
pinch of salt
¼ tsp cream of tartar
2/3 cup (finely powdered) turbinado unrefined sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
Enjoy life mini chocolate chips (for eyes)
Chocolove large chocolate chips (for mouths)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat egg whites until foamy; add salt and cream of tartar then beat until stiff.
3. Add sugar, 2 Tbsp at a time, beating well after each.
4. Stir in vanilla extract.
5. Drop batter by the heaping spoonful into upright ghostly shapes (do the best you can!) onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
6. Place in the oven and then turn off the oven immediately; cookies will be ready when you wake!