Krampus Cookies

A few days ago I showed you some lovely cookies, today you get to see my Krampus cookies of awesomeness (just a twinge of sarcasm as I type that). I tried two new recipes, only making half of each since I wasn't sure which would suit my needs. I'll start with the second recipe I tried since it worked a lot better.  If you recall I wanted see what I could come up on using the cookie cutters I had on hand.  I decided after the first recipe that I like the upside down gingerbread man cookie cutter the best for making Krampus.  The star is my second favorite.

These cookies use the Chocolate Sugar Cookie recipe from JoyofBaking.com.  This is not the first time I've used a recipe from there, it's my go-to for baked goods.  The recipes are always solid and if you are a novice, her videos can be really helpful.

I was a little intimidated by this recipe because the dough is rolled out between parchment paper, then refrigerated, then you make the cutouts.  I needn't have worried, it was really easy to work with.  I chilled mine overnight and after cutting out, the cookies were still really cold and solid.  I thought they were perfect after 10 minutes in the oven.

The scraps I rolled and re-rolled, by the time I squeaked out every cookie I could, they were pretty soft.  I popped those back in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before baking.  They still weren't as cold as that first batch, but they only spread just a teensy bit more during baking.

My favorite way to decorate cookies is to just paste stuff on like a preschooler.  I used ganache for paste.  This is the same ganache recipe I use for everything from Peppermint Bark Brains to Rat and not surprisingly I originally got it from JoyOfBaking.com.

I've never used ganache to frost cookies before so I'm pleased to say it actually worked.  Usually with regular sugar cookies I'll bake and freeze them ahead of time. When I'm ready to decorate, I pipe on frosting immediately out of the freezer and refreeze them until I need them.  That won't work with the ganache, both the ganache and the cookies have to be at room temperature to frost.  Of course you could use chocolate frosting, but ganache is like silky ribbons of heaven gently caressing your tongue, so why would you?

But before you make the ganache you need to make the horns and tongues. For the nose I used skull candies and the eyes are plain old candy eyes.

I used Kraft caramels mixed with a little Tootsie Roll for color.  Brands matter here, some caramels spread (more on that here).  If you don't like Tootsie Rolls you don't have to use them but you really can't taste it with the caramel.  I used a slightly different method from last year's Krampus horns. These are smaller, two sets of horns per caramel as opposed to one and these are slightly quicker to make, at least it feels like they are.

Microwave the caramel for a few seconds if they are firm.  Just the caramel, the tootsie roll is much softer.  10 seconds was perfect in my microwave.  Roll the two together on a non-stick surface.  I really chose a bad example to photograph I didn't mix the tootsie roll in very well, so it's mostly hidden in the middle.  I utilized the cute little grid on my parchment paper and rolled it out to one inch and then cut it in half.  Then rolled the half to one inch and cut that in half.

Then I rolled that piece into a one inch cone shape.  

Then I twisted and bent it into a horn shape.  

Rinse and repeat until you have all the horns you want.  

For the tongues I used Brach's Holiday Spicettes.  This is important because the red ones are cinnamon flavored and isn't Krampus a little spicy?  You will also need some red decorating sugar.

Roll the gum drop flat dusting with the red sugar as needed to keep it from getting sticky and you should end up with something that looks like this. 

Cut triangles out, round the top of the triangle if you wish and coat the cut ends with more red sugar.

Ganache 

4 oz. chocolate (broken or cut into small pieces, I use Lindt 70% dark)
¼ cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
½ teaspoon vanilla

Mix chocolate, cream and butter in a small glass bowl. Microwave for 1 minute at 50% power and let stand for 1 minute. Stir until smooth. It will look really grainy at first and then it starts to smooth out. Once it’s smooth stir in the vanilla. 

Let it cool for a few minutes.  It shouldn't be warm, but you don't want it to set, so maybe 5 minutes.  Spoon the ganache on the cookie and spread it around.  It doesn't set quickly, so you have time to work.  I covered the thirteen cookies I made before placing the decorations.

Add the horns, eyes, tongues and then sprinkle with brown or black jimmies.  I thought it might look cool to mix the two colors and it doesn't.

If you aren't going to be eating them soon, freeze them in a single layer.  Once frozen they can be stacked between layers of parchment paper or plastic wrap and sealed in plastic containers or ziplock bags.



One note of caution and actually I think it's a feature.  Ganache has a lot of moisture, you can see below after thawing the moisture wicked up into the eyes causing the black to bleed.  I personally think they look better that way.  It also made the black jimmies and skull nose turn grey.

The ganache does set nicely and remains firm even after thawing.

For the first batch I used this Mocha Shortbread recipe.  Last year I made shortbread GingerDead Skulls, so I thought this would work.  Surprise, not all shortbread recipes are the same.  I even chilled the dough for an extra long time after cutting out the cookies, but they spread all over the place while baking and edges were very crumbly.  The cookies taste good, exactly what you would think a mocha shortbread would taste like.  I'm sure they work fine as bar cookies, the way the recipe intended them to be made.


If you really want mocha cookies I would suggest adding espresso powder to the chocolate sugar cookie recipe.

I don't have a lot of cookie cutters, but I tried out the few that I thought might work for Krampus.

As I said, the gingerbread man and star were my favorites.   The little eyeball monsters were a mini tulip cutter, which upside down looks like a Pac Man ghost.  In this case they turned out as little blobs.

Below top left is a bat cutter, bottom right is a bunny head and the other two are upside down trees.  The bunny still looks too much like the bunny, maybe the bat would've been ok if the dough hadn't spread so much, but I think the tree is pretty good.

 

Next time I'll have to try my hand at Yeti's.