Disney Tips Your Guide To A Great Disney Vacation
No matter what your plans are for Halloween, get ready with a spooky Nightmare Before Christmas treat tray from Disney Family.
Create your own charcuterie of classic holiday candies, but don’t forget to add the perfect Halloween touch with special delicacies representing your favorite characters from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack Skellington and his ghostly friend Zero make the cutest sugar cookies, while we took inspiration from Sally to make colorful, candy-covered pretzels. Add your own personality with a fun tray, small candy bowls, and all your favorite seasonal goodies!
Ingredients for Jack and Zero Cookies:
Your favorite sugar cookie recipe ingredients, or premade sugar cookie dough
Paring knife
Extra flour
Rolling pin
3–4 cups powdered sugar
2 eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla
Black food coloring
Single orange round sprinkle, or orange food coloring (for Zero’s nose!)
Ingredients for SALLY PRETZELS:
Mini twisted pretzels
Teal, purple, pink, and yellow candy melts Chocolate candy melts or chocolate chips
JACK AND ZERO COOKIES:
Make your sugar cookie dough, or grab your premade dough.
Lightly flour your countertop or a large cutting board, and roll out the dough to about ¼ –½-inch thick.
For Jack’s head, you can use a large circle cookie cutter; however, I like to use a knife and cut it freehand for a more uneven look!
Zero is definitely a trickier shape. I like to sketch out his silhouette on a notepad a couple of times first so that I’m familiar with his shape when it’s time to cut the dough.
Bake your cookies.
Take out the cookies. Set them aside, and let them cool completely.
Meanwhile, to make the icing, first add the egg whites to a large bowl, then slowly add in the powdered sugar while you whisk. I like to add the sugar ½ or 1 cup at a time until the icing becomes a little harder to whisk. You don’t want it too runny, but if you feel like you added too much sugar, you can add another egg white. Don’t forget the vanilla as well!
Spoon your icing into a plastic sandwich bag, but leave about ½ cup of it to the side.
Add a generous amount of black food coloring to the remaining icing and mix well. Put the icing in a plastic bag. When you’re ready to use your icing, push the icing into one of the bottom corners of the bag and cut a very tiny hole. You can make it bigger if you need to, but always start small.
Take your cookies and start with a base of white icing on both Jack and Zero. Let that first layer set for a few minutes.
Take your bag of black icing and add line details on both.
You can mix up some orange icing for Zero’s nose, or use an orange sprinkle!
SALLY PRETZELS:
Start by melting down your candies one color at a time. Place about 1–2 cups of one color in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring thoroughly between increments until it’s completely melted. It shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes.
Drop a pretzel in the melted candy, then use a fork to turn it over and coat it. Scoop it up with the fork and tap it on the side of the bowl to get rid of excess candy. Gently place onto parchment paper. Repeat with the rest of the pretzels.
After you have all your covered pretzels, melt additional colors and dip one side of each pretzel into the new color. Ultimately, you will have 2 or 3 colors on each pretzel! If you’d like to speed up the drying process between melted candy colors, pop the pretzels in the fridge for a few minutes to harden them up before adding the new color.
Once you have all your beautiful multi-colored pretzels, melt down the chocolate and spoon into a sandwich bag. Push it down towards one bottom corner, then cut a tiny hole in that corner. This will be your piping bag!
Lightly drizzle the chocolate over all the pretzels. Let cool, then serve!
Finish by adding your favorite candies to the tray for a spooky Nightmare Before Christmas treat.
Source: Disney Family
