Witches' Broomstick Cookies

Halloween. How do you celebrate Halloween? Do you bake? Decorate? Have parties? When I lived in the cities, I would decorate and hand out candy. In the 'burbs, we would have so many trick or treaters, there was never any risk of left over candy, it was just a matter of how much candy you wanted to buy! Back here in the sticks, I decorate for fun, mainly just for us. We get one or two trick or treaters each year, children we know.

This month, the cookie bakers from "Fill the Cookie Jar" were assigned a Halloween or "orange and black themed".  This was a bigger challenge than I thought it would be for me, and I almost backed out. The extent of Halloween cookies for me is typically sugar cookie cutouts, decorated in sprinkles.  But, I wanted to see if I could handle the challenge. I paged through ninety percent of my cookbooks with nothing that grabbed my attention.  Onward to the online search. I found some fun ideas, but not really recipes I would typically make. Finally, thanks again to Betty Crocker, I found the cutest Witches Broomsticks.  I think these would be super fun for some little gobblins to munch on. In our opinion, these did not have a long shelf life, so gobble them up with in a day or two of baking!

If you are interested in joining Fill The Cookie Jar group on facebook, fill out the form that can be found at Fill The Cookie Jar. Each month we bake a different theme for the cookie.  We bake, we share and we enjoy our cookies!

Witches' Broomstick Cookies   (Source:  Betty Crocker)
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 Tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
10 pretzel rods, cut in half to about 4" in length
2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tsp. shortening (Crisco)

Optional:
1/3 cup peanut butter chips, melted with one teaspoon of shortening
Halloween sprinkles

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix brown sugar, butter, water and vanilla in medium bowl. Stir in flour and salt. Shape dough into twenty balls, about 1 1/4 inch.

Lay pretzel rods on ungreased cookie sheet. Press ball of dough onto the  cut end of each pretzel. With a fork, press the dough to get the bristle look of the broom.  Bake about 12 minutes, until set but not brown.  Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet then transfer to cooling rack. Cool completely; about 30 minutes.

Place brooms on waxed paper. Heat shortening and chocolate chips over low heat, stirring occasionally, until melted and smooth; remove from heat. Carefully, spread melted chocolate over brooms, covering bottom portion of the pretzel rod, and the top portion of the broom.  Drizzle with melted peanut butter chips or cover with sprinkles
Let stand until chocolate is set.  Store in airtight container for 1-2 days.

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