Halloween Fingers (almond cookies)

As delicious as they are creepy, these finger-shaped cookies are terrifyingly perfect for Halloween. If you can 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 recipe for Halloween almond fingers , which could easily be those of any sinister witch, is going to terrify! LOLOLOLOL!

You'll see that despite being a very simple recipe , you'll have to get a little organized. The dough for these cookies, since it contains butter, softens when you handle it, so it needs to rest in the fridge a bit to give it time to firm up again; but if you follow the instructions I give in the recipe and at the end of the post, it will be very easy to get some horrifying fingers.

The little ones can help out, they'll be delighted to help roll out the dough, mark the knuckles on their fingers or put on the almond nails! This is a great recipe to make with them; they'll have a great time, it will help them practice patience and craftsmanship in almost equal parts and they'll be able to scare their friends and adults alike, with just a flick of a finger!

The quantities in the recipe make approximately 22 fingers. So get your spider webs and the most monstrous Halloween decorations ready, here's the recipe!

Ingredients (for about 22 cookie fingers)

For the dough:

• 185 g of pastry flour
• 40 g of strong flour
• 50 g almond flour (finely ground almonds, preferably of the Marcona variety)
• 100 g icing sugar
• 125 g butter, diced and cold (keep in the fridge until use)
• 1 whole egg + 1 yolk lightly beaten
• 1 pinch of salt
• A little vanilla paste

To decorate:

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

*The long almonds will be the "nails" of the fingers. You can put them in whole or you can open them without breaking them too much, to use one half on each finger.

Preparation

1. In the KitchenAid bowl, place the strong flour, the pastry flour, the almond flour, the icing sugar and the pinch of salt, and stir with the paddle attachment at a gentle speed, so that they mix well.
2. Next, add the diced butter that we had in the fridge and increase the speed a little (3 or 3.5). Stir until you see that the dough has a sandy texture, similar to that of powdered Parmesan cheese.
3. Add the lightly beaten egg and yolk and the vanilla paste, and continue stirring until the dough changes and looks compact.
4. Remove the dough from the bowl using a spatula or a flexible scraper and wrap it in cling film. Chill it in the fridge for 30 minutes to 1 hour, until it feels firmer.
5. After this time, you have to start shaping the dough to make the fingers. To avoid the whole dough from softening, it is best to take it out in parts, keeping the rest in the fridge. Take the dough out of the fridge, cut off about a third of it and put the rest back in the fridge wrapped in cling film.
6. With the part of the dough that we have removed, we form rolls or cylinders of between 1.5 cm and 2 cm wide at most and approximately 9.5 or 10 cm long. As we make them, we place them on a perforated baking tray , lined with baking paper or with a perforated silicone baking mat , and we put them in the refrigerator.
7. We repeat the process until we finish the dough and let the rolls cool and harden a little before finishing shaping them.
8. When they are ready, we take them out of the fridge and place an almond on one end of each roll as a nail. We press the almond lightly into the dough so that it stays firmly in place.
9. Using a knife or a toothpick, we mark the knuckles and shape them lightly, using our fingers as a model.
10. We put the fingers back in the fridge to cool them down before baking them. Ideally, we would leave them in the fridge overnight.
11. When we see that the dough on our fingers has cooled enough (when we touch it we notice it is firm), we will brush them with a fingertip to which we have added a few drops of water to make it more fluid.
12. Once we have painted the fingers, we will turn on the oven at 180 °C, heat from above and below and when the oven is at 180 °C, we put the tray in and bake for about 15 minutes or until we see that they begin to take color. Depending on how golden we like the cookies, we can leave them a little longer.
13. Once they are ready, we take them out of the oven and let them cool on a rack. They will be a little soft when freshly baked, but they harden as they cool.
14. All that's left to do is present them on a plate (the Le Creuset pumpkin plate is perfect for the occasion). You can put a little strawberry jam or any other red fruit jam around the almonds, and you'll have some terrifying Halloween fingers that will leave your guests with their mouths open and will delight the little ones!

Considerations

• You will notice that when you work the dough (when making the rolls or when you finish shaping the fingers), it will soften. For this reason, it is important to take out of the refrigerator only the amount that you are going to manipulate, keeping the rest cold. If you do it several times, you will save time, since when you finish forming the rolls with the last portion of the dough, the first ones you formed will already be cold and you can start shaping the fingers without having to wait.
• When you bake the cookies, you'll notice that the dough expands a little and your fingers change shape slightly. That's why it's best to make the rolls thin, preferably 1.5 cm or at most 2 cm. That way, even if they expand a little, they'll still look good (despite how scary they are!!).
• In addition, we added a portion of strong flour to the ingredients, which will help absorb some of the fat and water, which will also be helpful.
• We can also prevent them from expanding by leaving them in the fridge for longer than usual. Ideally, they should be prepared the day before, or at least left to rest in the fridge overnight.
• By using both the perforated tray and the perforated silicone mat, the dough will cook faster, become crispier and deform less.
• When we take the fingers out of the oven and place them on the cooling rack, we must avoid handling them, since they are soft when freshly baked and could break.
• Each oven is different, so it is important to monitor the baking time after 10-12 minutes, so that they do not brown too much if you want them slightly browned. Depending on how you like your cookies (more or less golden, more or less crunchy), you will have to adjust the baking time.
• If you want to make them look even more creepy, you can use a little natural food coloring powder in the color you want in the mixture, or replace the strawberry jam on your nails with melted chocolate or cocoa butter. Whatever you can imagine!
• This dough is ideal not only for making terrifyingly delicious fingers. You can have delicious cookies by making balls with portions of dough; flatten them slightly and prick them with a fork before putting them in the oven. Decorated with a little icing, chocolate, praline or just like that, dipped in a big glass of milk, they will brighten up your afternoon.