A shortbread recipe for ugly witches’ fingers, made more realistic with almond fingernails and optional “blood”. Gruesome yes, but tasty!
Ingredients
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1 cup icing sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp almond extract
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 cups whole, unblanched almonds
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325F. Sift flour and salt together in a small bowl and set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat butter, icing sugar, egg and extracts together until well-blended.
- Add flour and salt mixture and stir just until combined. Cover dough and chill for 30 minutes.
- Working with 1/4 of the dough at a time, roll dough into a log the diameter of an adult’s finger (about 1/2 - 3/4”). Cut log into 4 inch lengths. Place fingers on a parchment lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Place a whole almond at one end to make a fingernail. Just behind the “nail”, pinch the dough to form the upper knuckle. Pinch again further down to make the lower knuckle. Take a knife (if the kids are doing this part, use a dull knife) and mark lines across the knuckles to make them realistic. Continue with the rest of the dough.
- When fingers are done, place in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden.
- To make the fingers even more gory looking, lift the almond off the finger when the cookies come out of the oven and squirt a bit of red decorating gel into the nail bed, then reinsert the almond. This is a job for mom or dad, not kids.