Fall

For the most part, I prefer my Halloween cookies to be cute and cheerful rather than scary and ghoulish. This year I did some of both. These Cheerful Pumpkins were the cute kind and my Chubby Witch Fingers were the scary kind. I made the pumpkins in three sizes, a bit like a family with a Papa, Mama, and Baby. Oddly enough, all our trick-or-treaters this year were in family groups, too. Dads accompanied their little ones to the door, while the Moms stood in the background smiling.

The liquid amber trees in our yard are starting to drop leaves and I find great satisfaction in raking them up ... at least at the beginning of the season. I know I’ll grow weary of it in a week or two, but the first signs of autumn always give me joy. These beautiful, messy trees also inspired me to create cutout cookies and multi-colored Autumn Leaves are the result. I had so much fun making them and decorating them. I must admit that when it comes to leaves...baking them is more satisfying than raking them.

My nephew lives in a small town where the oak tree is protected and you’re not allowed to do anything to them without a permit. This makes the squirrels very happy.

Turkeys and pumpkins are the classic shapes for Thanksgiving cutout cookies. They can be crazy or elegant, but decorating them reminds me that this is the time to think about all the people I’m thankful to have in my life. My favorite way to let them know how much they mean to me is to give them cookies. On the “big day” the dessert table may be loaded with pies, but when it’s time to go home, everyone leaves with a cookie or two for the road. There’s always room for a cookie. Right?

Leaves make the most appealing shapes for cutout cookies. And dark chocolate is an autumn-kind of flavor so leaf-shaped chocolate sandwich cookies is a brilliant idea. I filled the sandwich with a simple chocolate ganache and, voilà! ... a beautiful and irresistible cookie. But I warn you: it’s not possible to eat only one.

When the leaves start to change color, I can’t resist making Chocolate Cutout Cookies in the shapes of leaves, pumpkins, and acorns. Sometimes I’ll add a squirrel-shaped cookie to the batch if the squirrels haven’t been too pesty during the summer. If they’ve dug up all my potted plants and terrorized the birds I try to attract into my garden, well, then I refuse to give them any attention when it comes to making fall cookies.