Meg vs. Halloween: Gingerbread Mummies!

My friend Kelly and I got together on Monday to make some gingerbread mummies to share with our neighbors. I saw a few variations of this idea on Pinterest, and we couldn't resist trying it out. We each had a fussy baby in tow, so I didn't get many pictures, and in 4 1/2 hours we still hadn't finished. But by the next morning I had them all wrapped up and ready to go.

Here's big brother getting in on the rolling and cutting. I actually liked the cookies he did; they had missing and stretched body parts, which really was perfect for the theme.

I let the boys go to town on their cookies with some canned frosting and sprinkles, which kept them occupied for a while.

Meanwhile, we churned out the rest of our mummies, with white royal icing embalming and red sprinkle eyes.

 I think these have to be the easiest decorating job I've done with royal icing! Here is one of big brother's cut-outs. I love how it came out!

We used two different recipes for the two batches, since we have some friends that can't have dairy and wanted some of the cookies to be butter-free. The first is my favorite recipe from Sue over at Munchkin Munchies. These are the ones I have made the last few years at Christmas, and I could eat a whole batch myself.

The second is this recipe for Nauvoo Gingerbread from AllRecipes.com. It calls for lard (this recipe is old school!) but I used shortening and they came out really lovely and soft. They are very mild, so good if you have littles like mine that might be averse to a stronger gingerbread. Otherwise you might want to up the spice content to suit your tastes.

And you can also find the royal icing recipe over at Munchkin Munchies. It is perfect! (The sugar cookie recipe is my favorite too; Sue is the best).

Here they are all packaged up and ready to go. I was going to add some cutesy ribbon, but this was as far as I got.

And with the leftover icing and some chocolate chips I whipped up some googly eyes for future use.

It took me two full days to recover from the cookie mess, but it gave me a good excuse to go out and meet my neighbors after a whole year of living here!