Clicker Fingers (Pistachio Sugar Cookies)
I love Halloween, but I find that Halloween recipes tend to be more cutesy than spooky. So I developed this recipe to be something spooky, maybe a bit too far on the edge of creepy, but something fun for both kids and adults.
These cookies use pistachios as a natural food color and the main flavour. They’re exceptionally delicious, with a crumbly melt-in-your-mouth texture. The fingernails are made of jam and a blanched almond. The recipe is very easy, even more if you have a food processor, and kid friendly to shape and decorate. These are a great way to get kids involved in the kitchen, but also fun grown ups who want to dress up and pretend there are monsters.
I called these Clicker Fingers because I dressed up as Joel from The Last of Us, one of my favourite video games of all time (and soon an HBO TV show!) – but you can all them wizard fingers, witches finger cookies, or zombie finger cookies.
Ingredients
75g pistachios
150g sugar
1 tsp salt
350g flour
160g butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg + 1 yolk at room temp
1 tbsp red jam, I like raspberry
30 blanched almonds
Notes:
I’ve made these with both raw/hulled pistachios and roasted/salted pistachios in the shell (remove the shell). Both work, but the raw hulled pistachios will be easier and give you a greener colour – but they can be hard to find at the grocery store.
Method
I tested many, many variations of this recipe to get the fingers to keep their form in the oven. If you want to achieve this look you need to use a kitchen scale. If your ratios are off, the cookies will spread out and turn from Clickers into Bloaters (for non-gamers: your wizard will develop gout).
In a food processor:
In a food processor, add the pistachios, sugar, and salt, and process the pistachios until very fine. You can also use a blender for this step, but follow the remaining “by hand” steps if using a blender.
Add the flour, butter, vanilla, egg, egg yolk to the food processor and process for 1 minute until the texture of wet course sand.
Pour the mixture onto the counter and knead the mixture until it comes together and wrap the dough. Rest for 30 minutes at room temperature – this will hydrate the dough and make it easier to shape.
By hand:
Place the pistachios in a ziploc bag, place the bag on a kitchen towel on your counter. Beat the pistachios using a wood rolling pin or mallet until very fine. It’s very difficult and time consuming to do this with a knife.
Mix the butter, sugar, and salt together – try not to mix in a lot of air, you’re not creaming the sugar, just combining. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix to combine. Add the vanilla and mix until homogenous.
Add the flour and pistachio and mix until a wet sand texture. You may need to switch from a mixing spoon to kneading the dough so it comes together. Wrap the dough and let rest for 30 minutes at room temperature – this will hydrate the dough and make it easier to shape.
Shape the cookies
This explanation is long, but the process is easy once you do a few.
You need a parchment lined baking sheet that will fit in your freezer. The parchment is absolutely required here, or you’ll break your fingers removing them from the baking sheet.
Divide the dough into roughly 1tbsp balls of dough (10-15g).
Roll each ball into a rope 4-5” length – use your finger as a guideline (if the fingers are too long or too thick, remove dough). Because the dough is very dry, there can be pockets of air that cause them to break open as you’re rolling – re-roll the dough and the warmth of your hands will help the butter bring the dough back together.
Make them a variety of lengths, since fingers are all different sizes. Place the dough rope on the baking sheet. For some, keep them straight. For others, make them wavy – like broken fingers.
Place a blanched almond on the tip of the dough rope, pointy side out.
Push the almond halfway down into the dough, with your thumb and forefinger molding the dough around the nail (pinching).
Remove any excess dough from the front of the nail.
You’ll end up with a knuckle shape expand behind the nail. Create another knuckle in the middle by pinching the dough slightly.
Using the back of a paring knife, create 3 crease lines on each knuckle.
Repeat with the remaining cookies, they can be very close together here as they will be moved before baking.
Freeze for 30 minutes until completely frozen.
Bake
Pre-heat your oven to 325°F.
Transfer the frozen cookies to a parchment lined baking sheet, place the cookies 2” apart. I was able to fit 10 fingers on one baking sheet.
Bake for 12-14 minutes. The bottom of the cookie will brown, but you don’t want the tops or sides to brown. If the cookies are underbaked they will taste a bit starchy instead of toasted pistachio.
Remove the baking sheet from the oven. While the cookies are still hot and still on the baking sheet:
Remove the almonds and set them beside each finger
Add around 1/8 teaspoon of red jam (I like raspberry) into the nail bed where the almond used to be. Try to keep the jam closer to the cuticle.
Add the warm almond back, pushing the jam down to creating the “bloody nail” look.
If the red jam is too spooky, apricot jam will be a nice complement that’s neutral in colour.
Allow to fully cool on the baking sheet before transferring. If you try to move them why they are warm they will break. Once cool they are fairly durable.
I like to crumble the tiniest amount off the bottom of the cookies so they look like severed fingers.
Alternates:
You can brown the butter and add 15ml water to make up for the water lost to evaporation, but this masks some of the pistachio flavour
Add finely chopped rose petals for a very scary look and baklava flavour
Add chocolate chips for a rotten flesh look and great taste
These make a beautiful Christmas cookie as well. Roll the dough into a 2” diameter log, freeze, slice, sprinkle with coarse sugar then bake. For Christmas the rose petal variation looks very seasonal.
Troubleshooting:
The cookies spread
If your cookies spread a lot the butter and flour ratios are off. You can knead 1-2 tbsp more flour into the dough and try again.
You can pretend it’s intentional and call them a dead man’s toe.
The cookies are cracking, or the dough doesn’t come together when shaping
If your cookies crack, the dough is too dry. Pat your hands with water and knead the dough. You only need a small amount of water.
The cookie on the left here has chopped dried rose petals which give an even spookier look to the cookies.