Saturday, October 09, 2010

Halloween gingersnaps and Jack-o-lantern cookies

The feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King, which in the old calendar falls on the last Sunday of October, is the titular feast day for the Institute of Christ the King. This year I'll be arriving in Florence on October 23rd, I'll join the Adorers a few days after that, my family will stay till the 29th, and the last Sunday in October comes on... the 31st!  My arrival date was suggested by the sisters to give me time to get all settled in before the big ol' Solemn High Mass on that day.  So since Christ the King shall henceforth be a very important feast for me, and since it falls this year on All Hallows Eve, I'm obviously obligated to make a bunch of Halloween cookies.

Here are some cute Jack-o-lanterns!



I'm sure you'd like to know how to make them, but you know creating shapes like these with the great faces and all is bound to be difficult. I'll include instructions, but only the advanced baker should aspire to match my feat.  Here we go!

Step 1: Go to the grocery store and buy this:



Step 2: Open the package, break the cookies apart, and toss everything on a cookie sheet.



Step 3: Bake them and take them out of the oven.



Whew!  After all that, you wouldn't expect me to make anything else, but I'm dauntless and made gingersnaps too. :)  My basic recipe for gingersnaps is here. My adaptation for Halloween is as follows: go to the grocery store and get some orange and black sugar-- they sell it in the baking aisle in October.  Then make the basic gingersnap dough.



Roll the dough into balls and dip each ball halfway into white sugar.  Dip the other half into colored sugar.  Place each ball on a cookie sheet with the colored side up.



Then bake 'em!



They spread out and crack.



With this pretty result.



I think gingersnaps look awfully appealing even just dressed in plain white sugar.  And they're really tasty too.



I had a list of stuff I wanted to bake before leaving, and these gingersnaps were pretty much the last item on that list.  It's been great fun, and hopefully in the convent I'll lose whatever weight I've gained. :)  It would have been nice to lose pounds before entering and arrive at the convent slender, but I keep seeing tasty foods and thinking, "Oooh, it's my last chance to eat that!" and... well...

2 comments:

ignorant redneck said...

not to be dense, but are you going to St. Louis, or Italy?

Will you be living in the US?

We need good nuns here!

Oh--below you worried about being 32--I'm 51, and still haven't grown up. We gotta get old, but we don't gotta grow up!

Gos Bless you!

Rachel said...

Thanks, Redneck! I'm going to Italy and I expect to be there at least through the novitiate and maybe longer. Eventually they're likely to send me to the US, but only God knows.