Witch Finger Cookies

By Lorena_321

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 t. almond extract
• 1 t. vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cup flour
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1 t. salt
• 3/4 cup whole blanced almonds or slivers

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine dry ingredients. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla extract. Beat in dry ingredients. Cover and refrigerate dough for 30 minutes. Working with 1/4 of the dough at a time, and keeping remaining dough refrigerated, roll heaping tablespoons full of dough into a finger shape for each cookie. Press an almond firmly into one end for nail. Squeeze in center to create a knuckle shape and use a paring knife to make slashes in several places to form knuckle. If you want to paint the nails, use some red food coloring that's been diluted with water and brush on with a clean artist's brush. Place cookies on the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until pale golden. Let cool for three minutes. If desired, lift up almond and squeeze red decorator gel onto nail bed and press almond back in place so gel oozes out from underneath. Remove from cookie sheet and let cool on wire rack. Repeat with remaining dough.
Note: Make cookies smaller than you think they need to be, as they will spread when baking. Also, you can tint the cookie dough green or grey for a more "witchy" effect. Makes about 5 dozen cookies.