Halloween Cookie Favor Cones

Wow, so this is it, the last Halloween post of the year! And not a moment too soon, right? I mean, I am waiting until the day of Halloween to post it and all. I know, I know, I could have released it sooner and given you more time to work on it, but it just seemed like I ought to post something on Halloween to celebrate. I feel like everyone’s already moving on to Christmas and Thanksgiving at this point, but not here. Nope, not ready to let go just yet. Talk to me tomorrow when we hit November. So, without further ado, I want to introduce you to one of my favorite and slightly more complicated projects this Halloween: season: vintage-inspired Halloween cookie favor cones. Because why not eat the candy container too?

Halloween Cookie Favor Cones
Makes 6 cookie cones

What you’ll need:
18 triangle cookies
A batch of royal icing
Fondant (homemade or store bought)
String/ribbon
Food coloring
Stamps/stencils
Corn syrup
Assorted, food-only brushes

To start, you’ll need some cookies. You can use more or less than 18 cookies to make more or less than 6 cones, but keep in mind that each cone will take 3 cookies to make (and I really recommend making extras. You’re probably going to break some cookies with this project…). For this project, I made chocolate cookies because I wanted a dark cookie to work on. It just went better with the look I was going for. To make the cookies, I used Julia Usher’s template, which you can find here.

Once you’re cookies are made and have cooled, you can decorate them. You can really do whatever you’d like to decorate your cookies, but I decorated mine with white and orange royal icing, and then stamped and stenciled the dried cookies. Fun tip: you don’t need a fancy airbrush machine for stenciling your cookies! Instead, you can use food coloring to do it. Simply hold your stencil in place (warning: this can be kind of messy) and dab with a brush dipped in food coloring. When you’re decorated cookies have dried, you can assemble them. The design and construction of these cookies is based on Julia Usher’s May Day basket cookies, so rather than retell everything she says, I’ll simply refer you to her tutorial. And lucky you, it’s a video tutorial!

So hopefully at this point you have your cones all assembled, strung, and ready to decorate with fondant. Color your fondant if you’re going to and roll it out. How far you roll it out will depend on how much you want to bunch and ruffle it. Personally, I rolled mine out to about 1.5 times the length of a single side. Cut your fondant into 1″ wide strips and ruffle the edges using a ball tool and a piece of foam (if you need more information on ruffling fondant, I recommend this tutorial). Using a brush, apply a line of corn syrup around the top of your cookie cones (preferably under holes for the strings). Start sticking your fondant ruffles to your cookies, bunching the fondant as you go to create folds. Make sure to overlap the ends of your fondant to cover any seams. You can add small embellishments like strings, ribbons, or even wafer paper to create all sorts of fun effects. Be sure to let everything dry completely before filling and/or packaging your cookie favor cones.

Happy Halloween!