Creepy Witches' Fingers for Halloween

Creepy Witches' Fingers
with just the right amount of ooze and crustiness.

Creepy--yes. Tasty--you bet. These Halloween cookies are always a big hit with their lucky recipients and have become a seasonal baking tradition in my kitchen.

Friends begin reminding me weeks before October 31st that they are expecting their treat. Set atop fluffy gauze, these little finger morsels are sometimes a bit too much for traditional dessert lovers; they grimace and cry yuk and proclaim that they will never eat one! One bite and they are hooked on these tasty appendages filled with slivered almond bones and oozing raspberry jam blood....told you they were creepy!

Doesn't get any scarier than a bloody witch finger resting on a bed of gauze.

So now that you are totally grossed out, let me fill you in on the recipe and technique for these scary, but fun Halloween treats. The nail is a halved blanched almond painted with a touch of red food coloring; the cookie portion is just a simple dough made with either cocoa or a bit of food coloring, the broken bones are shards of the almond, and the blood is created with raspberry or apricot jam dyed with a touch of red food coloring (intentionally oozed out for the yuk effect). Each warm cookie is brushed with more cocoa powder to give the look of--well you get the point! Don't want to gross you out too much.

For several years, my friend Erin and I have made these together. They have become one of our baking traditions. Erin also helps out with the annual Christmas cookie baking days. For this recipe, I provide the baking expertise, Erin provided the artistic guidance. Together we have a baking blast mixing, forming, dusting and highlighting bloody fingers and ogre toes each October. At the end of the day, we pick the most disgusting one and decide on the recipient.

Previous year my lucky friends got two or three
--cute packaging by Martha Stewart also on sale at Michael's.

We have, however, become rather frugal with distribution--these treats are definitely a labor of creepy Halloween love! Several other friends have joined in the baking day tradition to learn the technique and share the gory goodness with their family and friends. Kids always love them, but it's usually the adults that find our Witches' Fingers so much fun and are afraid to even touch them. Word has spread throughout our circle of friends that Creepy Witches' Fingers and plump, disgusting Ogre Toes will appear sometime around October 31st of each year. But we want you to promise and eat them. My brother thought his cookie was so disgusting that he kept it frozen until our family Christmas Yankee Swap--guess who got it back?

Last year we tweaked the recipe using several different flours. Our final recipe ended with some having a combination of white whole wheat pastry flour with almond meal and chopped pecans. No matter what dough you make them with, they will be deliciously gory, disgusting, creepy, and so much fun to share. If you want, use store-bought sugar cookie dough. They will still be tasty and scary!

Let me know what your Trick or Treaters think. You can also link to Erin's blog for more photos of the decorating technique:

Creepy Witches' Fingers
Makes as many as you can eek out


1 cup white whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8+ teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup confectioners sugar; sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup almond of hazelnut meal
1 tablespoon fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon cocoa powder or red and blue food coloring*
Seedless raspberry jam (for blood), apricot works also
Red food coloring mixed with a few drops water to thin for decorating
Ghirardelli cocoa mix or your favorite for dusting
Feather brush and thin brush for decorating
Whole raw almonds, split into 2 pieces for nail
Slivered almonds for bones

*If you are making the lighter cookie, eliminate the cocoa and use a few drops of red and blue food coloring to tint parts of the dough a gross icky purple gray after it is mixed. You don't want it uniform--kind of speckled. Add the food coloring to the dough while still in mixer, just after it has come together into a ball. Use a few drops at a time in different parts of the dough. Swirl beater on low a few times just to barely blend and leave streaks of color in the dough. You can also knead the dough by hand adding the dye as you go until it looks creepy. Hope this makes sense. You are trying to make the lighter cookie look old, aged, and disgusting.....kind of!

Preheat oven to 300°F.

Sift flour, cornstarch, salt and cocoa (if using) into a bowl. Cream butter in a mixer, then sift in confectioners sugar and mix until fluffy. Add vanilla, hazelnut meal, and orange juice and mix well.

Slowly add flour mix to butter and combine until dough appears crumbly and just comes together into a ball.

At this point, if you are using food coloring instead of cocoa, add a few drops and mix together on low until you achieve a blended grayish effect. Or do by hand.

Place in waxed paper and refrigerate for about an hour. Or alternatively, you can put the wax paper wrapped dough into a freezer bag and freeze until baking day. Thaw in refrigerator before proceeding.

Remove dough from refrigerator and pinch off a small piece. Shape into a long cylinder, then press to flatten a bit to make an indentation. Fill with about a teaspoon of jam, then gently seal, pinching the dough together and forming a seam. Don't worry if a little jam oozes out--that's part of the gory fun. Gently roll a few times to re-create a round cylinder.

With a paring knife make a few soft indentations for knuckles (see photo). Press a halved almond into the tip of the finger to create a nail bed. Push a shard of almond into the opposite end to resemble a broken bone. Hang in there now! You'll get the hang of this. I promise you don't have to be an artist to make these. Place cookies on Silpat or parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

Refrigerate trays of cookies for 15-20 minutes to firm dough before baking. If you skip this step, you will end up with big, flat toes!

Do a test bake on one of your larger cookies to see how long it takes to cook. I cook with gas, so I usually bake the cookies for 20+ minutes until light brown. I always check the first few batches after 15 minutes just to be on the safe side. Timing will vary depending on how large you make your fingers and how hot your oven bakes.

Remove from oven and immediately brush each cookie with cocoa powder. Let cool on a wire rack completely, then decorate nails and oozing jammy spots with red food coloring to your degree of gross goodness!

You can freeze your decorated cookies for up to a month.

Enjoy!

Pinch a piece of the dough off and roll into a 3-4" long, fat Tootsie Roll shape.

Fill dough indentation with a small amount of jam, then pinch together.

Easy way to pipe jam into the middle of the dough--a Ziploc bag with corner snipped off.

 Using as little flour as possible, form filled dough
into a log pressing in twice to raise the center (like a knuckle)
to create the look of a finger. Add almonds for nails at one end
and bones at the other end.

A variety of shapes and sizes of oozing witches' fingers
aged with drops of red and blue food dye to make an icky purple gray (Erin's artistic description!).
Shards of slivered almond poke out at one end of the dough for a bone
and split whole ragged almonds go at the other end for the nail.
It's usually one person's job just to get the almond bones ready.

Nails are pressed into the top of one end and shards of bone are pushed
into an indentation at the other end.
Use a paring knife to cut shallow slits into the dough
where knuckles and wrinkles would normally appear.
Let the raspberry jam ooze out a bit for effect.

Chill the shaped cookies for at least 15 minutes, so the dough
will hold its shape when baking and not spread.
Test bake one to see if dough is firm enough.

Warm baked cookies ready to be dusted and aged with cocoa powder.

The oozing raspberry jam and crunchy almond nail look tasty don't they?
Use your paring knife to make the edge of the almond nails ragged before inserting.

Step 1: 
As soon as the cookies emerge from the oven,
lightly brush cocoa powder mix with your feather brush.
Make sure to get into the nooks and crannies.

We use Ghirardelli hot chocolate mix,
but you can just use regular cocoa if you prefer less sugar.

Be quick--you don't want the cookies to cool too much,
otherwise the cocoa powder won't adhere as well.

This takes a little practice to figure out how much cocoa is enough to create the proper effect.

Before dusting--bottom photo.
After dusting and red food coloring--top photo.

Step 2:
After cookies have cooled, red food coloring blended with water
is lightly brushed into nail beds, crevices, and tears in the dough.

Ready for packaging or the freezer.

Each friend received one perfect appendage last year.
Lots of work but a fun tradition!
Love this little cupcake Halloween boxes I found at Michael's.

Presentation is half the fun!
Cheesecloth or gauze makes the perfect bedding.

To YOU
from ME

I hope the photos give you an idea of the decorating technique, what type of brushes to use, and where to add food coloring and cocoa powder for the gory effects. Let me know if you have any questions. Next year we'll do a video to make it easier to follow. Plan to give one or two fingers/toes to each person. For a scary presentation, find a Halloween cupcake box or look at Martha Stewart's line of holiday packaging (I found both on sale at Michael's). Add gauze or cheesecloth for the bedding and wait for the smiles, yuks, so disgusting and Wow, how did you make these--they look so REAL! comments coming your way.

Happy early Halloween! 

Got lazy last year and made my Jack 'O Lantern with my drill!