Scary Cookies

To bring a little American holiday cheer to Australia, I decided to bake some Halloween cookies. Although, I can't really remember the last time I baked Halloween cookies, I do remember the last time I baked Christmas cookies, so I felt confident in my abilities. Unfortunately, several factors conspired against me to make some of the most homemade cookies, I think I've ever made.

1. I didn't have Halloween cookie cutters, so I cut out stencils from paper, and traced around them with a knife. Maybe this seems obvious, but this step was incredibly time intensive.
2. In the time it took to cut out the cookies, the dough would get too warm (tropics, right?) to manipulate onto the tray
3. How many grams is one cup of butter? The internet suggest 240g, I'm still unconvinced.
4. My oven doesn't fit a standard cookie (or biscuit) sheet. I learned this, having finally negotiated my first batch of cookies onto the sheet, and nope, doesn't fit the long ways, ok, and doesn't fit the short way. Hmmm. I ended up baking them with the sheet at an angle, the one way it would fit, making some cookies much closer to the heating element than others, and all of them battling the forces of gravity.
5. I set butter out to come to room temperature for the icing, when I came back the butter was not just softened, it was a puddle, making my icing then a bit thinner than anticipated.
6. All iced cookies then went into the fridge to firm up the icing. Promptly upon removing them the icing began to melt once again, so that jack-o-lanterns had smeared their smiles by the time they reached work.

Much to my surprise most of them got eaten, and it did remind folks that it was Halloween. I guess that's the point.