How are you doing?

It's Russell.

In this video, we're going to make some really fun little

Halloween cookies.

And so I'm really looking forward to showing you this.

It's kind of just a couple of steps.

And we're going to make the cookies out of all these

ingredients you can see here.

And we're going to do this just in one

step in the food processor.

Then I'm going to show you how to make a couple of different

colours of icing so you can have fun with it.

I'm actually going to be using a pumpkin-shaped cookie

cutter, but obviously you can get many different shapes of

cookie cutter.

But I knew we could do orange icing by coloring it up with

some carrot, carrot juice, as you can see

there on your recipe.

And I knew we could do green as well, by making some icing

with spinach.

So you can get-- like I saw some

bat-shaped cookie cutters.

And you can make black icing with black

sesame seed, black tahini.

So just kind of have a play around with it.

But the main cookies going to stay the same, no matter what

icing you put on there.

I'll just talk these through as I put them in.

So we've got walnuts, Brazil nuts, and pecans, which have

been soaked and dehydrated, just to make them a lot more

digestible and make them a little bit more crunchy and

less heavy.

And what you're also going to find is when you process them

after you've done that, after you've soaked them and you've

dehydrated them, they're not going to be as oily.

Especially pecans can really be very oily if you

over-process them, but not if you soak them first and then

dehydrate them.

So yes, let's do all those first.

And doing these first, we're able to get this quite fine.

OK.

That's looking pretty good.

So we're going to add the rest of our flours into there.

So we've got--

you could use coconut or oat flour for

that one, and lucuma.

So this is a fruit that's dried and made into powder.

And it's great in cookies, in bases for things like

cheesecakes and pies.

It's sweet.

And it just gives a really nice flavour that lends itself

well to this kind of thing.

We've got some orange juice.

A pinch of salt.

And a little bit of--

you can use pumpkin spice or mixed spice.

All right in.

OK.

And then to also help this bind, I like to use apricots.

These are just kind of semi-dried apricots.

I mean, these are really pliable still.

And when you kind of break them open, they're still quite

moist inside.

If you think they're a bit too dry, you can always just soak

them maybe for an hour before you

actually put them in there.

And then we'll just give those kind of a rough dice.

And we're looking for just the right consistency with our

final cookie mix that we're then going to be able to get

the rolling pin to it and roll it out and cut out a couple of

cookies at a time.

So I'm going to show you kind of the final consistency

you're looking for.

And if you find that it's a little bit too dry, you can

always add a little bit of water to it, because we're

going to be dehydrating anyway, so even if for

whatever reason your mixture doesn't quite end up the same

consistency as mine, you can just add that water to it.

You can get those going, and whilst I'm doing that, I'm

going to do the same to these raisins as well.

I'm just going to cut those down.

That will make it easier for the food processor

to break them down.

OK.

So this is the kind of consistency that you're

looking for--

I'll just have the blade out--

so that when you kind of mush it together in your hands like

that, it holds together, like a nice kind of doughy ball.

So get a good amount in your hand, onto the board.

Now, each mix is a little bit different, for whatever

reason, depending on how oily your nuts are and how much

moisture you've got in that final mix.

And sometimes it will stick to your board and to your rolling

pin, and sometimes it won't.

So just try it without--

just like I am at the moment, without any kind of extra

flours or anything.

And as you can see, that's actually

rolling out really nicely.

It is quite difficult to get raw kind of pastry mix like

this to roll out like that.

So if you find it sticks to your rolling pin or sticks to

the board, you can just do what you would do in normal

cookery and put a little bit of extra flour down.

You could use a little bit of oat or coconut flour.

Or you could just get your board a little bit wet and get

the rolling pin a little bit wet.

But I don't know if you can pick up that, but there's

quite a lot of oil on there from all the ingredients we've

got within that batter.

So that's working a treat.

OK.

So I usually do about this kind of size,

about two at a time.

So I'll push that down, get a good print.

And then it's a little bit different than kind of

traditional cookery.

We have to be a little bit more careful.

And just get your knife under there.

l'll move all these other pieces.

And then take your dehydrator tray, just a mesh sheet is all

that's needed.

Take that off, and pop it onto the mesh.

So just cut away the bits around it, because it makes it

easier to slide your knife under it then.

And sometimes, like this, it's just

falling away really nicely.

And sometimes it will be it a bit stickier.

This seems to be working quite nicely.

OK.

So you can see how we go with that.

Then you just kind of bunch this up together again, get a

little bit more, and continue that process until you've got

a full tray of cookies.

So what we'll do now--

I'll just carry on doing this.

And then we'll come back, I'll show you the tray of cookies

that I've got that have already been in the

dehydrator.

They're already done and they're ready for the icing.

Here we go, then.

Here are our Halloween cookies, our pumpkin cookies,

out of the dehydrator.

And I've gone ahead and iced one already.

You can see that's dry to the touch after it's been in the

refrigerator.

So we've done-- in your recipe, you've got some orange

icing that we've made orange with the carrot juice.

And I've got green icing here as well.

So let me just show you quickly.

There's a couple different ways you can do this.

And you have to be kind of mindful of when you first

blend you your icing it's actually

going to be quite loose.

So when you put it in your piping bag, it's going to just

run out the end.

So you want to put your piping bag in a glass.

Then fold over the edges, put your mixture in there.

And then you probably want to wait--

it depends how warm it is and how cold it is where you are.

But I would say 30 minutes to an hour in the refrigerator

and it's going to be probably just about the right kind of

consistency to be able to pipe it on.

This is a little bit loose still, but we're going to give

it a go anyway.

The orange one, you can put that in a piping bag.

I did that for this one.

But you don't necessarily need that to go in

a bag at this point.

So I'll just move these out of the way and show you this one.

So take one of your cookies.

I've got a small pallet knife or spatula here

that's been in hot water.

I'm just going to take a little amount of my orange

icing and just get it up onto the stalk

there, spread it out.

Just get it right to the edges.

And then once we've got it fairly even, then we're going

to just make it smooth out.

Make it look a little bit more presentable.

OK.

Then from there, you might want to just dip your spatula

into the hot water again and just smooth it

over nice and gently.

Just let the heat of the spatula just

smooth it out like that.

These look like beautiful, homemade cookies.

And then you would probably want to let that just firm up

a little bit.

You could ice the green straight onto that one.

But I'm just going to get a little bit

of that green stalk.

So maybe this a little bit looser than it normally would

be, so we're just going to be really gentle.

Just get the icing to the end of the bag there.

You get a green top.

The firmer the icing, the more you're going to be able to

play around with kind of doing designs on there and stuff.

So a little fun project for Halloween.

Have a go at it.

Let me know how you get on.

Hope you enjoy it.