Halloween Fingers (almond cookies)

As delicious as they are spooky, these finger-shaped cookies are terrifyingly perfect for Halloween. If you manage to get over the initial creepiness and dare to take a bite, you won't be able to stop eating them, from the nails to the last crumb! This Halloween almond finger recipe, which could very well be those of any sinister warlock, it's going to terrify! HAHAHAHAHA!

You'll see that despite being a very simple recipe, you're going to have to get a bit organized. The dough for these cookies, since it contains butter, softens when handled, so requires some resting in the refrigerator to give it time to firm up again; but by following the tips I point out in the recipe and at the end of the post, it will be very easy for you to make some creepy fingers.

Kids can pitch in—they’ll be delighted to help roll the dough into logs, mark the finger knuckles, or add the almond nails! It’s a great recipe to make with them; they’ll have a great time, it will help them practice patience and crafts in almost equal measure, and they’ll be able to scare their friends and the grown-ups—just by moving a finger!

With the quantities in the recipe, you can make approximately 22 fingers. So get the cobwebs and the most monstrous Halloween decorations ready—let’s get to the recipe!

Ingredients (for about 22 ladyfingers)

For the dough:

• 185 g of cake flour
• 40 g of bread flour
• 50 g almond flour (finely ground almond, preferably of the variety marcona)
• 100 g of powdered sugar
• 125 g butter, cut into cubes and cold (keep in the fridge until use)
• 1 whole egg + 1 yolk, lightly beaten
• 1 pinch of salt
• A little bit of vanilla paste

To decorate:

• Almond variety longish*
• 1 egg yolk with a few drops of water to brush your fingers

*Almonds longish will be the fingers' "nails". You can put them on whole, or split them without breaking them much, to use one half on each finger.

Preparation

1. In the bowl of the KitchenAid mixer, add the bread flour, pastry flour, almond flour, powdered sugar, and a pinch of salt, and mix with the paddle attachment on low speed until well combined.
2. Next, add the butter cut into cubes that we had in the fridge and increase the speed slightly (3 or 3.5). Mix until you see the dough has a sandy texture, similar to powdered Parmesan cheese.
3. Add the egg and the lightly beaten yolk and the vanilla paste, and continue stirring until the dough comes together and looks compact.
4. Remove the dough from the bowl, using a spatula or a flexible scraper, and wrap it in plastic wrap. Chill it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to 1 hour, until it feels a bit firmer.
5. After that time, you need to start shaping the dough to make the fingers. To keep the entire dough from softening, it’s best to take it out in portions, keeping the rest chilled. Take the dough out of the fridge, cut off roughly a third, and return the rest to the fridge wrapped in plastic wrap.
6. With the portion of dough we’ve taken out, shape ropes or cylinders between 1.5 cm and 2 cm wide at most and about 9.5 or 10 cm long. As we make them, arrange them on a perforated baking tray, lined with baking paper or with a perforated silicone baking mat, and put them in the fridge.
7. We repeat the process until we’ve used up the dough, and let the rolls cool and firm up a little before finishing shaping them.
8. When they’re ready, take them out of the refrigerator and place an almond at one end of each roll as a fingernail. Press the almond lightly into the dough so it stays firmly in place.
9. Using a knife or a toothpick, mark the knuckles and gently shape them, using your fingers as a guide.
10. We put the fingers back in the fridge so they chill well before baking. Ideally, we would leave them in the fridge overnight.
11. When we see that the dough for the fingers has cooled quite a bit (when touched, it feels firm), we’ll brush them with an egg yolk to which we’ve added a few drops of water to make it more fluid.
12. Once we’ve brushed the fingers, preheat the oven to 180 °C, top and bottom heat, and when the oven is at 180 °C, put the tray in and bake for about 15 minutes, or until they start to take on color. Depending on how golden we like the cookies, we can leave them a little longer.
13. Once they're ready, we take them out of the oven and let them cool on a wire rack. Freshly baked they'll be a bit soft, but they firm up as they cool.
14. All that's left is to serve them on a plate (the Le Creuset Pumpkin Plate, it's perfect for the occasion). We can put a little bit of strawberry jam or any red fruit around the almond, and that way we'll have some terrifying Halloween fingers that will leave our guests open-mouthed and delight the little ones!

Considerations

• You’ll notice that as you work the dough (when making the logs or once you’ve finished shaping the fingers), it starts to soften. For this reason, it’s important to take only the amount you’re going to handle out of the fridge, keeping the rest cold. If you do it in batches, you’ll save time, because by the time you finish forming the logs with the last portion of dough, the first ones you shaped will already be cold and you can start molding the fingers without having to wait.
• When you bake the cookies, you'll see the dough expands a little and the fingers change shape slightly. For this reason, it's best to make the logs thin, preferably 1,5 cm or, at most, 2 cm. That way, even if they spread a bit, they'll still look good (even though they're terrifying!).
• In addition, among the ingredients we add a portion of bread flour, which will help absorb some of the fat and the water, which will also be helpful.
• Additionally, we can prevent them from expanding by leaving them in the fridge longer than usual. Ideally, prepare them a day in advance, or at least let them rest in the fridge overnight.
• By using both the perforated tray and the perforated silicone mat, the dough will bake faster, be crispier, and deform less.
• When we take the ladyfingers out of the oven and place them on the cooling rack, we must avoid handling them, as they are soft when freshly baked and we could break them.
• Every oven is different, so it's important to start checking the bake from 10-12 minutes to keep them from getting too browned if you prefer them lightly browned. Depending on how you like your cookies (more or less golden, more or less crisp), you'll need to adjust the baking time.
• If you want to give them a much more horrifying look, you can use a bit of natural powdered coloring in whatever color you like in the dough, or swap the strawberry jam on the nails for melted chocolate or cocoa spread. Whatever you can imagine!
• This dough is ideal not only for making terrifyingly delicious fingers. You can make tasty cookies by rolling portions of dough into balls; flatten them slightly and press them with a fork before putting them in the oven. Decorated with a little icing, chocolate, praline, or just as they are, dunked in a big glass of milk, they’ll brighten your afternoon.