Halloween Chocolate Chip Cookies are made fun and festive with candy eyes and bright swirls of buttercream frosting. Boo could resist?!
This is a sponsored post on behalf of Pillsbury. All opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that continue to make My Baking Addiction possible.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it is almost October. I desperately want it to feel like Fall, but Mother Nature clearly has other plans. One day I’m wearing boots and a sweater and for the next five, it’s back to t-shirts and flip flops. And because it’s still hot and humid here in Ohio, I still can’t get behind baking with pumpkin quite yet, so instead, it’s Halloween allthethings.
If you visit My Baking Addiction regularly, you know that I am no stranger to shortcuts in the kitchen. Whether it be a doctored-up cake mix, jarred marinara, or chocolate chip cookies from a box, sometimes this working mama just needs a timesaver. And I know that other mamas do too. There’s nothing wrong with a shortcut now and then.
When I was approached by Pillsbury to use their new Purely Simple™ Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix in a fun recipe and participate in a Blog Hop. I just couldn’t say no. How could I possibly resist a batch of homemade treats from Aimee of Shugary Sweets? Seriously, how cute are these Snickerdoodle Blondie Bites?
And since I was sending my dessert to the talented Amanda of I Am Baker, I knew I wanted to create something fun and festive for her littles to enjoy. Five little mouths to impress is a tall order, but I think I nailed it.
Around here, there’s really nothing that goes over better with family than chocolate chip cookies, so having a boxed mix option without artificial colors, preservatives, or flavors is a total win in my book. Timesaver, and ingredients I know and love too.
I decided to save even a little more time by using the Pillsbury Purely Simple™ Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix to create bar cookies. I then used a small biscuit cutter to cut the cookies into perfect little circles. This step is definitely not necessary, but created a nice shape and flat top for those pretty swirls of frosting.
While these Purely Simple Chocolate Chip Cookies were perfectly delicious on their own, I decided to jazz them up a bit by adding in colorful Halloween sprinkles and pretty swirls of buttercream. However, if using food dye is not your thing, simple spirals of plain buttercream create adorable ghosts that are pretty darn boo-riffic!
Be sure to check out the complete Pillsbury Purely Simple™ line at your local supermarket and check them out on Facebook for more recipe inspiration.
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract (this helps maintain the bright white color)
1-2 tablespoons milk
gel food dye, optional
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8x8-inch baking pan with parchment paper.
In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, combine cookie mix, butter, and egg until a soft dough is formed.
If using, fold in sprinkles and mix until they are evenly incorporated.
Spread cookie dough into prepared pan.
Bake in preheated oven for 23-25 minutes.
Remove pan to wire rack and cool completely.
Once the cookies are cool, prepare the buttercream.
For the Buttercream
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream butter on medium-high speed for about 6 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add in powdered sugar, and continue beating until well blended.
Add in vanilla, and 1 tablespoon of milk. Blend on low speed until moistened.
If needed, add additional milk 1 teaspoon at a time, until you reach the desired consistency. Beat at high speed until frosting is smooth and fluffy; about 5 more minutes.
If desired, use gel food dye to color the frosting.
Spread frosting onto cookie bars, or use a small biscuit cutter to cut the cookie bars into small circles. Pipe frosting onto cookies and top with festive sprinkles.
Notes:
This buttercream recipe makes a generous amount of frosting. If you do not desire to pipe the frosting onto the cookies, I would suggest cutting the buttercream recipe in half.
Halloween Marshmallow Pops couldn’t be easier or more festive. Everyone’s going to want one the minute they get to your Halloween party!
This is a sponsored post on behalf of Campfire® Marshmallows. All opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that continue to make My Baking Addiction possible.
We spent a lot of time at Cedar Point this summer. If you're not familiar with Cedar Point, it's an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio that boasts 71 rides, including 17 roller coasters, kiddie lands, live shows, etc. It's also dubbed the Roller Coaster Capital of World, so if coasters are your thang, you probably want to add a visit to Cedar Point to your bucket list, pronto.
Elle fell in love with the place immediately, so we splurged and purchased season passes because we knew we'd get a lot of summer bang for our buck. It's pretty much the perfect place to take your toddler when you've had enough of the water table and Elmo's World. She has been obsessed with widing wides (riding rides) since we stepped foot in Kiddie Kingdom.
For reasons I cannot — for once, I mean, good riddance — articulate, I spent half the summer, the half I was gestating this tiny moppet, with a nonstop craving for broccoli cheddar soup, something I’d never actually eaten before. I think a comment got it started and even though I can no longer find it, I’ll never forgive it. Sure, I had heard of the soup, but it always seemed to be in that category of foods it was better not to investigate. I mean, just consider all of the ways our lives have been ruined by finding how ridiculous brown butter and sea salt flakes are in crispy treats, or what happens when you make saltine crack into an ice cream sandwich, or butter in tomato sauce. I didn’t want to know why a cheddar cheese soup base was an obsession of so many people.
But once it got in my head, no amount of earnest effort could distract me for long. So, I got to Googling and mashed up several well-rated recipes with overlapped ingredients and brought to the table that night something that was basically a rich cheese sauce with a few flecks of broccoli — i.e. almost cruelly delicious but seriously, if I want a cheese sauce, I promise, I will always just make one. (Regardless, we all slurped it up.)
