Pumpkin Spice Halloween Cookies

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut the butter into pieces. With an electric mixer thoroughly mix the butter, sugar, egg, pumpkin spice extract, vanilla and cream until smooth.

Stir together flour, salt, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and baking powder, then add to the mixture and beat until dough is well mixed. Now you're ready to turn the dough onto a dusting of flour and confectioner's sugar and roll to 1/4 inch thickness with a rolling pin. You don't need to chill the dough for an hour as with many recipes, although we put half the dough in the fridge while working and cutting the other half. Cut the cookies into Jack O' Lanterns, Black Cats, Bats and other favorite Halloween shapes and bake on parchment paper or directly on an ungreased cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 6 to 8 minutes.

While your pumpkin spice sugar cookies are cooling, mix up a batch of Royal Icing, replacing the Lemon Juice with 2 teaspoons of Pumpkin Spice Extract, then divide the batch and tint with orange, black, yellow and brown food coloring to design the cookies pictured. For flooding the main icing color, mix icing to a consistency like honey then spoon or pour into piping bags. For outlining and details, use a stiffer, less watery consistency, somewhat like softened cream cheese.

Have fun, and please share how your Halloween cookies came out by leaving a review!