Halloween Part 2 - Carrot Leaf Cookies

This recipe can be adapted for any season, but this one here is for Halloween. We made something similar last Easter, and shaped the cookies like carrots and radishes. The ones we made today were shaped like leaves and "pumpkins" (aka circles).

Ingredients:

1 C butter, softened
1/2 C brown sugar
2 eggs
3 cups flour, white or wheat (plus some for rolling out dough)
1 t baking powder
3 med carrots or 4 small carrots, chopped into 1" sections
1/2 C applesauce
1/4 C water (approx.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and mix well. Add flour and baking soda and mix.

In a blender, blend carrots, applesauce and water (add only enough water to get the carrots completely chopped up). Blended mix should be between 2-3 cups.


Add carrot mixture to flour mixture.

Roll out dough to about 1/2" thick, using LOTS of flour so the dough doesn't stick. Cut into shapes.

Bake cookies about 20 min on ungreased cookie sheet, until just barely browning on the edges. Makes about 3 - 5 dozen, depending on the size you cut them. Healthier alternative to other cookies, and yummy to boot.

For different colors, use blended peas for green and strawberries for pink... play with it; it's fun. Just keep in mind that the color is severely diminished by baking.

Halloween Part 1 - Decorations

Here are two very inexpensive and fun looking Halloween decorations:

1. Silhouette paper bags

Materials: silhouette patterns*, brown lunch paper bags, pencil, permanent black marker, electric tea lights

Directions: Open paper bag; position silhouette pattern in the paper bag. Trace with a pencil. If you can't see the silhouette, hold the paper bad up against a window. Take out the pattern and fill in the pencil marks with black permanent marker. (If you're really confident, use the black marker from the get go.) Insert electric tea light (or two) and place along a walkway or on a porch or wherever.



2. Pumpkin Jars

Materials: Empty glass jars, tape and permanent markers, red and yellow (or orange) food coloring, water, flashlight

Directions: Using the black marker, Design a pumpkin type face on the outside of your glass jar (if you want the face to come off easily, put clear tape where the face is). Drop 3 drops yellow and 1 drop red food coloring in jar; fill with water and put lid on. Place a flashlight behind the jar. Or, if you have a set of them, white Christmas lights strung behind them would look cool, too.

Easy, fun to do with kids, inexpensive, and still festive.