Halloween severed finger cookies

It's Hallowe'en.

Peanut butter cookies in the shape of human fingers. Amaretto icing fingernails and bloody stumps.  

The peanut butter cookie dough is adjusted a little on the stiff side to retain a finger shape. The leaven agents are reduced by half. This is a very short dough using peanut oil, butter, and shortening in an amount that equals the sugar. Flour to stiffen. 

Depressions for fingernails are pressed with a dinner knife. The same knife applies a dab of white icing and flattens it onto the baked-in depression. 

Red food coloring is added to the white icing and daubed onto the end opposite the fingernail. 

Ya know if you wanted to go overboard stylistically you can reserve some white icing then dot the center of the red stump white to imitate a severed bone. 

A classic cookie recipe is adjusted slightly for nefarious ends.

*  1/2 cup granulated sugar

*  1/2 cup packed brown sugar

*  1/2 cup peanut butter

*  1/4 cup shortening

*  1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened

*  1 egg

*  1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

*  1/2 teaspoon baking soda

*  1/4 teaspoon baking powder

*  1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream the sugars with the peanut butter, butter, shortening, and egg.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  

Shape into fingers.  Press indentation for fingernail.  Tap the edge of the knife with three or four close strikes to indicate a knuckle joint. Squish the finger to bulge the knuckle and wrinkle the lines that were tapped in just like a real knuckle. 

Chill. 

Bake at 350℉/175℃ for 10 minutes. 

Cool 

Icing:

*  1 cup or so confectioners sugar

*  1 teaspoon Amaretto liqueur

*  few teaspoons water added in incrementally to desired thickness

Apply fingernail icing. Add red food coloring to icing. Apply icing in drips to the severed stump end of the fingers. 

I designed these fingers a few years ago for Department pot luck at work. I signed a list saying I'd bring  "finger food" which caused people to expect something dainty. 

My coworkers went nuts with these fingers. Within an hour they were all spread across the whole building, across the mall to the supplemental office building. People set them in other people's desk drawers to be discovered and at the paper cutter next to copiers, on top of other people's in boxes, that sort of thing. 

I notice that most people begin nibbling the cookie at the fingernail to taste the icing but also as if to trim the nail. They're fun and every bit as good as any peanut butter cookie. 

The cookies are surprisingly good.