These Day of the Dead cookies are easy-to-make sugar skulls, perfect for Cinco De Mayo or Halloween. Kids will love decorating their Day of the Dead cookies with you. They’re easy to make and delicious to eat.
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How to Make Sugar Skull Cookies
There is nothing better than decorating colorful cookies together. It is a great way to create memories with the kids. These Day of the Dead cookies are a great activity for your Day of the Dead Celebration or as another cookie on Halloween. Serve these cookies alongside skeleton popcorn hand mix, Mexican cornbread, and homemade chicken flautus.
A while back, I made three dozen sugar skulls for a Spanish class, “Day of the Dead Fiesta”! I’ve always thought the Day of the Dead celebration decorations were so beautiful. I love them. So, when my daughter handed me the sign up sheet for “what to bring”, I checked off sugar skulls. I could have made it easy on myself and checked off salsa. But, nope, not me…I picked baking and decorating three dozen cookies. All kidding aside, I loved trying my hand at Sugar Skulls. Now that I’ve done it, they are not so daunting. I might sign up for this item next year, too. Here’s my recipe for the most delicious sugar cookie and frosting ever and some ideas on decorating your Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls.
What You’ll Love about these Cookies
- Easy – These are not overly fancy or complicated. Use candy and icing to decorate sugar skull cookies with the kids.
- Tasty – Made with a delicious sugar cookie recipe and icing, you’ll love the taste of these Day of the Dead cookies.
Ingredients for Day of the Dead Sugar Cookies
- One cup of granulated sugar
- One cup of powdered sugar
- One cup butter
- One cup oil
- One egg
- One tsp. vanilla extract
- ½ tsp. almond extract
- 4&1/2 cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
Cookie Icing
To make the cookie icing, you’ll need powdered sugar, water, and almond extract
Decorations for Day of the Dead Cookies
Good & Plenty
Life Saver Gummies or Fruit Flavored Soft Puffs
Icing with writing tips
Sprinkles – like nonpareils
Optional: Chocolate Melts in a candy tube
How to Make Easy Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
In a large bowl – Cream the first four ingredients
Add the egg, vanilla, and almond – mix in
In another large bowl, mix the flour & baking powder
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet, and mix
Chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour
When you are ready, roll the dough out between two sheets of wax paper *my little trick to avoid sticky dough on the rolling pin
And…cut the shapes out with a skull-shaped cookie cutter
*Pop it back into the refrigerator. When the dough warms up, it does so pretty quickly. I like to take half of the dough out, roll, and cut…then take the other half out to finish
Bake for 8-10 minutes
Mix the icing with powdered sugar, almond extract, water, and food coloring. *Add water gradually until the icing is the consistency you like
When the cookies have cooled – decorate them
Ideas for Decorating Sugar Skull Cookies
Ice cookies with white cookie icing
Add white Good-N-Plenty for teeth
Use gummy life savers or fruit soft puffs for the eyes
Make an upside-down heart for the nose with cookie icing
Use black icing from a tube to add pupils for the eyes, a line across the teeth, dots, and decorations to the sides of the sugar skulls
Use another icing color from a tube to make more accents like dots, swirls, and curly lines.
Tips for Making Sugar Cookies
The dough should be cold when shaping with the cookie cutter. Try working with half the dough while the rest is in the refrigerator.
Use two sheets of wax paper to roll the sugar dough out
Do not roll the dough too thin. The cookies should be about 1/4 inch thick.
Variations
You can make these sugar cookies with your sugar cookie recipe or use store-bought sugar cookie dough and skull cookie cutters.
FAQs
Can Sugar Cookie Dough Be Frozen?
Yes. You can roll the dough out and place sheets of rolled dough between wax paper. Freeze the dough. When you are ready to make the cookies, let the dough thaw and punch the dough out with cookie cutters.
More Cookie Recipes You’ll Love
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Watch My Video on Decorating Sugar Skull Cookies
Printable for Sugar Skull Cookies
Sugar Skulls Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup oil
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- ½ tsp. almond extract
- 4&1/2 cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
Icing
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp. almond extract +1 tsp. additional added to this
- 8-10 tsp. water
Candy Ideas for Decorating
- 1 cup Soft Puffs
- 1 cup Good & Plenty
- Chocolate Melts – black and at least 2 other colors
- ½ cup Non-Pareils Black and other assorted colors
- 1 tube of cookie icing black
- 1 tub of cookie icing any color
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
- In a large bowl – Cream the first 4 ingredients
- Add the egg, vanilla, and almond – mix in
- In another large bowl, mix the flour & baking powder
- Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet, and mix
- Chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour
- When you are ready, roll the dough out between two sheets of wax paper *my little trick to avoid sticky dough on the rolling pin!
- And…cut the shapes out with a skull shaped cookie cutter
- *When the dough warms up – and it does pretty quickly – pop it back into the refrigerator. I like to take half of the dough out, roll, and cut…then take the other half out to finish
- Bake for 8-10 minutes
- Mix the icing by mixing the powdered sugar, almond extract, water and food coloring together. *Add water gradually until the icing is the consistency you like
- When the cookies have cooled – decorate using the tips below! 🙂
Notes
Nutrition
~Melissa – KidFriendlyThingsToDo.com
