Fixin' Leaks and Leeks

Pumpkin paranoia, which results from the relentless gaze of Halloween gourds that are scattered about the house, is real. At least, it is to me. Just the other day, I was standing at the top of the staircase, and I felt something push me from behind. Luckily, I didn’t fall, but when I turned around, I saw a bright orange pumpkin standing right behind me—and there is no Halloween décor on the second floor of my house. That means, that this pumpkin teleported itself somehow up the stairs—and sprouted arms, as well as a strange and dangerous sense of humor.

The only way to release myself from the gripping anxiety of pumpkins that stare at me, is to create a whole bunch of them in cookie form and eat them one, right after the other, in front of all of the other pumpkins in the house. Some might call it exposure therapy. I just call it a day in my kitchen making cookies—a whole pumpkin patch of cookies.

If you believe that the pumpkins in your house are staring at you, stealing your secrets, and trying to push you down the stairs, here is the recipe for putting such scary squash on notice:

Start with your favorite sugar cookie recipe and add three teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice to the dough. I adapted the following sugar cookie recipe from Betty Crocker. (Perhaps she came up with this recipe after a slew of pumpkins tried to throw a radio into the bathtub while she was taking a bath.)

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups of powdered sugar

1 cup of butter, softened

1 egg

2 ½ cups of flour

1 tsp of baking soda

1 tsp cream of tartar

3 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Frosting:

–Powdered sugar

–water

–red, yellow, and green food coloring.

Method:

–Mix the powdered sugar, butter and egg together in one bowl.

–Mix the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and pumpkin pie spice in another bowl.

–Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well.

Place the mixture into the refrigerator for a couple of hours or overnight.

Then, roll out the mixture and cut into desired shapes with a cookie cutter. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.

I never measure out the powdered sugar and water for the icing, but I try to make sure that the resulting mixture is not too thin or too thick. If I add too much water, I can add more powdered sugar to make up the difference. Once I’ve made two bowls of white icing, I can make colors by mixing the red and yellow together to make orange. The stems of the cookies can be green.

Results: Mostly, these cookies taste like sugar cookies, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I was just expecting to taste more of the spice, but the house smelled wonderful while the cookies were baking. Most importantly, I have plenty of pumpkins in my glass cookie jar to serve as a transparent example of what happens to psycho squash. I’m no pushover.

In Other News: Learn to make these Eyeball Jell-O shots.

My recipe and story are published here, on The Daily Drunk: Eyeball Shots Review. 

Your Turn: What is your favorite fall treat?