Archives for October 2013

Disclosure- I received the item(s) mentioned below to conduct my review.  I received no other compensation and my opinions are 100% my own.

Halloween is such a fun time of year.  I love decorating my house, helping my girls pick out costumes, and seeing the joy in all the children’s faces when they go trick or treating.  It is one of my favorite holidays.  That’s why I signed up to be a part of the Sweet Creations by Good Cook Haunted House Party Kit event.  I received several awesome items to create a Halloween themed party including a Hunted House Cookie Cutter Set, Hunted Cupcake Display, Halloween Cake Pops, and a Frankenstein cookie cutter.
My original plan was to make a gingerbread haunted house, Halloween cupcakes, Frankenstein cookies, and Halloween Cake Pops to bring to my daughter’s Girl Scout troop’s Halloween party.  Unfortunately my grandmother was in the hospital and so are plans changed and we weren’t able to bake everything or go to the party.  My grandmother is finally home thankfully and seems to be doing a little better.
We had already made the gingerbread cookie dough before I received the call to go to the hospital so once my grandmother came home I was able to finish the Haunted Gingerbread House with my girls.  I hope to still make the cupcakes and Halloween cake pops with them later this week.
I will admit that I was a little intimidated by the thought of making my own gingerbread cookie dough as I don’t normally bake, but the instructions on the Hunted House Cookie Cutter Set seemed easy enough so I figured I’d give it a try.  Several other bloggers had mentioned that they didn’t have enough dough when they followed the recipe on the box so I doubled it and had extra dough which was great because then my girls were able to use the Frankenstein cookie cutter to make some cookies plus they used some dough to make their own free form creations.  The dough was very easy to make following the directions and the final product was yummy.
We rolled out the dough on several pieces of parchment paper using a rolling pin and a piece of parchment on top of the dough to keep it smooth.  We found that it is much easier to just move the whole bottom sheet of parchment paper onto a cookie sheet then to roll and cut out the cookies and then try to move each of them onto a new piece of parchment on a cookie sheet.  Once the dough was about 1/8 of an inch think we used the cookie cutters that came with the kit to create 4 roof pieces, 2 side walls, the front wall, and the back wall.  My girls had fun turning the cookie cutters over to stamp each wall with different designs and then use the roller to stamp on bats and spiders.

Once the gingerbread cookie house panels cooled I still felt that they were a little too soft and spongy (I probably made them a little too thick so they didn’t crisp up enough).  I melted some chocolate and painted the inside pieces of the house to give them strength when one of the pieces cracked down the middle but that was totally my fault for handling them before they were totally cooled.  If done correctly you should be able to let the pieces cool and then assemble them without the chocolate as support.

Once all of the walls were firm we decorated them with icing, candy, etc.  I put icing into the corner of plastic baggies for my girls and snipped the ends to make easy piping bags.

The box says to use royal icing to assemble the house.  I didn’t have royal icing so I used decorator’s icing because it hardens similar to royal icing.  While it did hold the house together, I don’t think it was as firm as royal icing would have been unfortunately.  Live and learn!  I was able to assemble the house and take some pictures but before I had the chance to smooth the icing a little to perfect it and let my girls create a candy scene around the gingerbread house, it fell apart and the front wall broke.  My girls and I had so much fun working together and it was a great learning experience for all of us.  I think the Hunted House Cookie Cutter Set is easy to use if you have a little baking experience.  It just takes some patience and a lot of royal icing to hold it all together.

With the extra gingerbread dough we had made, my girls had fun making cookies and decorating them, too!

Want your own Sweet Creations Halloween baking products from Good Cook?
Use code HAUNTED23 and get 25% off your order.
Enter below to win your own Haunted House Party Kit.

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