Win some, lose some.

I discovered Baking Bites a little while ago, and I felt so inspired by some of the seasonal treats posted, I just had to try a couple of the recipes. The first goodies I baked were the Impossible Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes. They looked so easy and so delicious!

Win!

And...they were! I baked them a little longer, so perhaps the filling would have been a teensy bit creamier, but otherwise, the texture was exactly like a pumpkin pie and the taste was unmistakeable.

I'd also been eyeing the Vampire Cookies. Seriously. Get over there and look at the picture of them. I think that's my favourite part about Halloween. All the meals and treats people create that have that deliciously spooky vibe. When I saw the vampire cookies, I thought I had finally found a Halloween-styled treat I could actually pull off.

After making the cookie dough, chilling it in the fridge for its required hour, I discovered it was impossible for me to roll them out. Could not, would not. Maybe I need a lesson on rolling out cookie dough, because this isn't the first time I've had difficulty. It stuck to the counter, to the rolling pin, to my hands -- and yes, I did have flour on the counter, on my rolling pin, on my hands. When I finally got a bit of it rolled and pressed in my cutter, I realized I'd never get the cookie off the counter and on to the pan. So in a desperate attempt to save the idea, I rolled it up log-style and popped it into the freezer where it sat overnight. My thought was to slice them to the requested thickness and then continue with the recipe as planned.

Well, they did not freeze very firmly. They were sliceable but crumbled everywhere. Plus, as I cut and held the log from slipping around, I compressed it so my shapes started to turn out rather uneven. I finished matching them up as best I could, slopped on some crabapple jelly and threw them haphazardly into the oven. They baked for about double the requested baking time, too. Yeah. Tell me about it. I was also making pitas and I had everything timed out perfectly, but once the pitas had risen, I couldn't wait forever to get them in the oven, so I increased the temperature to 450 while the cookies were still in there. I really had stopped caring around the slicing and jamming step.

FAIL.

Putting the jam on and drawing a trickle of blood down to simulate a bite mark was even more difficult. I did about six of them and then quit. I don't think I'm meant to do fancy cookies, and if I ever get the desire again to make a recipe where it says, "chill dough, then roll out, then cut out with fancy cutter" somebody please stop me.

I'm going to turn them around so they look like weird little faces with spooky red, pupil-less eyes and cracked random smiles. I, um, meant to do them that way, anyhow.

What took these cookies out of the complete embarrassment zone is the taste. They're pretty good, though I think I'm going to attribute most of that to the jelly. My crabapple jelly. The cookie itself has a very subtle vanilla/almond taste. It's not anything special. But when combined with the jelly, it really works.

Anyway, I'll definitely make the cupcakes again, but unless I take cookie dough rolling 101, the vampire recipe is going in the trash.