The elaborate designs for el Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) has always intrigued me. So I decided to decorate my Halloween cookies to celebrate this age-old Mexican tradition of honoring the dead. The intricate swirls and colorful flowers that make up the designs for el Día de los Muertos are ideal decorations for cookies...the perfect pairing of the symbols for life and death.

The best thing about Halloween is that it means the beginning of the holiday baking season. And although Halloween is not my favorite holiday, making Halloween cookies is a lot of fun. Ghosts and Jack o’Lanterns, cats and ghosts...what great shapes.

Although decorated cutout cookies are my first love, there are other cookies that also lay claim to my culinary affections. Flavor and texture are key and sometimes what I’m really longing for is a delicious, crispy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside chocolate chip cookie. I almost always have balls of chocolate chip cookie dough in the freezer, ready to pop in the oven at a moment’s notice. No decorating time is necessary to produce these heavenly bites.