Witch's Fingers

I've had this recipe in my recipe box for ages, but never made it before.  Dawn from Dawn in Austin inspired me to give it a shot with all of her recent Halloween ideas.

Pardon my pan.  Stoneware stains as it's used, but the uglier it gets, the better it works.

The cookies themselves were kind of fun.  I might bring them to a party or serve them to kids for their shock value, but the truth is that their taste is nothing special.  I'm not a huge fan of sugar cookies to start off with, but if you have a sugar cookie recipe that you like, you might want to use it instead.

1 cup of softened butter
1 cup icing sugar
1 egg
1 tsp almost extract
1 tsp vanilla
2 3/4 cup of flour
1 tsp baking soda
whole blanched almonds
1 tube red decorator gel

• Mix butter with sugar, egg, vanilla and almond extract.   Beat in flour and baking powder.
• Cover and let refrigerate for 30 mins
• Working with one quarter of the dough at a time, roll about a tbsp (maybe a little more) into finger shapes.  
• Press almond into 1 end of each cookie for the nail.
• Squeeze in center to create knuckle shape.   Use a paring knife to create slashes in several places to look like knuckles.
• Place on lightly greased baking sheets, and back at 325 for 25 min.  (This wasn't hot or long enough for me to get the golden colour.  I ended up raising the temp to 350 for 5 minutes after the 25 mins was done.)
• Let cool slightly, then lift up each almond and squeeze red decorator gel into the nail beds.  Press almonds back into place so that the gel oozes out from underneath.

I found this dough hard to work with so I added a splash of milk to help it stick.  That seemed to help.   The recipe says it'll make 5 dozen cookies.  I only made one pan (about 24) of them before I put the rest back into the fridge and left for the afternoon.  I'm not sure if I'll be ambitious enough to make the rest.