How to Make Jack Skellington's Face on a Cookie
Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown from director Tim Burton's Disney movie, "The Nightmare Before Christmas," makes an excellent foil for Halloween-themed cookies. His neutral color scheme and simple features translate well to cookie form. Jack's distinctive face -- bone-white with hollow eyes and a wide smile that looks sewn shut -- looks best on circular cookies that match the character's round head. Whether you make cookies from scratch, a boxed mix or a slice-and-bake roll, decorating them with frosting is the simplest way of replicating Jack Skellington's look. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- 3 to 4-inch round cookies
- White frosting
- Frosting spatula
- Toothpick
- Black frosting
- Pastry bag
- Narrow piping tip
Instructions
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Prepare the cookies according to directions and allow them to cool to room temperature.
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2
Stir white frosting with a frosting spatula until the icing is smooth and pliable. If you're making your own frosting, use a recipe designed for cookies so it will set stiffly instead of staying soft.
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Coat the upper surface of the cookie as evenly as possible with white frosting using the frosting spatula. Create a circle of frosting in the center of the cookie and work it toward the edges, leaving a quarter-inch unfrosted border to make the cookie easier to hold and eat without touching the frosting.
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Sketch Jack's features into the soft frosting with a toothpick. These faint lines give you a guide for where you'll place the black frosting and draw in the Pumpkin King's features. Large, hollow eyes, two small teardrop shapes for nostrils and a mouth as wide as his head are Jack's distinguishing characteristics.
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Pipe black icing within the marks you made with the toothpick. Using the small piping nozzle, draw the outlines of Jack's features first, then fill them in with frosting. Jack's mouth requires only a single curving line that follows the shape of his face and a number of shorter lines perpendicular to his mouth.
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Dampen a clean fingertip in fresh water and smooth the black frosting features with your damp finger. You'll achieve a smooth effect that looks more integrated with the character's white face.
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Repeat the process with other cookies until you run out of cookies and/or frosting.
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Tips & Warnings
Commercial black frosting in a tube with a fine tip works well and saves you a step if you don't have a pastry bag.
You don't need to be precise with the crosshatching on Jack's mouth; the lines on the character's face aren't regularly spaced and sized, so random variation looks more authentic.
Try different expressions on Jack's face for variety in your batch of cookies.
Avoid getting your fingertips too wet when you dampen them to smooth the icing; you could cause the black dye to smear onto the white frosting if you use too much water.
References
- Photo Credit Getty Images/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
