Halloween is one of the holidays that I associate most strongly with cutout sugar cookies. I remember having to wait an eternity (well, it seemed like an eternity to me as a 6 year old) for the dough to rest and chill in the fridge before we could roll it out and cut the cookies. We had a box of Halloween cookie cutters and I loved them all, but especially the witch’s broom. I relished sneaking tastes of the scraps of dough and finding the best place to cut the cookies. I’m still pretty dedicated to getting the most out of each rolling of the dough!

You can make this recipe with regular all purpose flour or gluten free flour. Just in case my fellow gluten-free friends ever feel like gluten free life is always more complicated, I wanted to point out the exception in this case. Gluten free cutout sugar cookies have a couple of advantages to their conventional cousins.

First, you don’t chill the dough and can roll the cookies right away, which, obviously, results in cookies that much quicker! The reason for this is that the cookie shape is held pretty well by the xanthan gum in the dry ingredients, and chilled gluten free dough can become very difficult to work with.

The second advantage is that the dough never gets tough from being worked too much because there is no gluten present to toughen it. So, you can roll it out as many times as you like. For me, this means that I don’t need to be nearly as anal about my kids cutting random cookies without trying the make the most of the rolling. Yay!

These cookies are good with a variety of glaze flavors, but I would like to feature here a salted caramel glaze. If you like the juxtaposition of salty and sweet flavors, this is the glaze for you! It is very simple to dip the cookies into the glaze, let the excess run off, place them on a cooling rack and sprinkle with jimmies and maybe a bit of extra flaky salt, and you are done!

• 3 ½ cups/496 grams flour (if using a gluten free flour blend without xanthan gum, add 1 ½ teaspoons xanthan gum)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup softened butter
• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup/60 grams
• 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 4 cups/480 grams powdered sugar
• ½ cup salted caramel sauce
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Sprinkles
• Flakey sea salt, if desired

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees if making gluten free cookies. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat the butter until it is creamy and beat in the sugars together with the butter until the mixture is fully mixed. Beat in the vanilla and eggs. Scrape the bottom of the bowl and continue to beat until the mixture becomes light and fluffy.

Reduce the speed of the mixer and stir in the flour until the dough comes together. Scrape the sides as necessary. If you are making wheat flour cookies, wrap the dough and place it in the refrigerator for an hour or two. If you are making gluten free sugar cookies, use the dough without chilling it.

Roll dough out on a generously floured surface to a thickness of about 1/8 inch. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet. Bake the cookies 8-10 minutes for all purpose flour sugar cookies and 10-12 minutes for gluten free sugar cookies. Remove baked sugar cookies to a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely.

For the glaze, whisk together the powdered sugar, salted caramel sauce, milk, and vanilla. Whisk until smooth. Dip cooled sugar cookies into the glaze and allow the excess to run off into the bowl. Sprinkle with jimmies or nonperils and a bit of extra sea salt as desired. Enjoy!