Countdown to Halloween - Vampire Theme

Today's theme in the 13-day Countdown to Halloween is "Vampires." We made a food treat, did some language arts activities, and did a service project today.

Food Treat

We made vampire cookies today. The pin for the recipe comes from Bright Ideas. It makes 24 cookies; and is an easy one to make. It does require 2 hours of refrigeration time before baking, so plan accordingly.

Vampire cookies that we made.

Ingredients:
· 1 ½ cups flour
· ¾ teaspoon baking soda
· ½ teaspoon cinnamon
· ½ cup butter, softened
· ½ cup packed brown sugar
· 1 egg
· Red food coloring
· ¼ cup red decorator’s sugar
· 24 pieces MILKY WAY® Minis
· 1 tube vanilla frosting

Directions:

Combine the flour, baking soda and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg; beat well. Slowly add the flour mixture into the dough until blended. Add enough food coloring to tint the dough a bright red. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line the cookie sheet pans with the parchment paper.

Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to 1/4-inch thickness. Use a cookie cutter to cut out 24 lip shapes. Otherwise, you can form the dough into 24 balls and flatten each slightly to create free-form shaped lips using your hands to pinch and shape the dough. Transfer these to the prepared cookie sheets. Re-roll the scraps if necessary.

Sprinkle the cookies with red sugar. Bake 7-10 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the oven, and immediately press a MILKY WAY® Minis into the center of each cookie.

Sophia pressing the candy bars onto the cookies.

Cool completely.

Cookies cooling before they are frosted.

Use vanilla frosting to pipe fangs over the candy.

Finished vampire cookies.

Tip: If short on time, consider using store-bought refrigerated sugar cookie dough. Begin by kneading 2/3 cup of flour into the dough, then roll and cut according to the above directions. One roll of cookie dough makes approximately 18 cookies.

Note: The cookies themselves don't have a lot of flavor. I also realized after we baked them that we forgot to put the decorator sugar on them so they aren't as sparkly as the original pin.

Having a lip-shaped cookie cutter also would have lent itself well to doing this recipe. We used an image of lips that we found on the internet that were about 4 inches wide. After we printed and cut out the image, we cut the dough using the image and a sharp knife. A cookie cutter would have been much easier and helped with consistency in appearance.

Language Arts

Both Sophia and Olivia did a vampire word find. They enjoyed doing this activity in the afternoon.

Sophia also did a vampire crossword puzzle based on the book Twilight. She was able to do most of the crossword puzzle, but couldn't figure out all the clues because she didn't see the movie.


Service Project 

We donated Band-aids to the food shelf. In addition to collecting food, non-perishable food items - like Band-aids are accepted as well.

Band-aids that we donated.

Other non-perishable items (e.g., detergents, cleaning products, toilet paper, soap, shampoo, any other products that are non-perishable) are equally as important as food because families in need still need these items, but a limited budget may make it challenging to purchase them.