Spookie Cookies by Karen Thi

Readers, I have written a weekly cooking column for over ten years now, but I fear that I will never be able to come anywhere close to the mastery Karen Thi displays in this spectacular tome on making the perfect scary treats for Halloween (or your other favorite spooky occasion.)

This cookbook has actually been in my kitchen for weeks, looming at me from the top of my microwave as I went about my daily cooking and chores, taunting me with my lack of precision baking skills. And while Ms Thi assures readers that you don’t have to be as skillful as she is in order to bake the impressive confections on display here, it probably helps if you’re at least more into baking than cooking, which latter is my preferred area of kitchen expertise. I also need to send a special shout-out to the wonderful publicists who endeavored to give me every tool I needed to make these cookies; you can see a pic of these awesome goodies — including a bench scraper, food coloring, icing bags and cookie scribe — below! I am deeply embarrassed to admit, after weeks of contemplation and a hard reckoning with my energy levels, that I simply Cannot.

What I CAN do is tell you about this terrific cookbook and its provenance tho! Ms Thi went from baking elaborate cookies in her spare time, selling them on Etsy and to friends, to making cookies for corporate brands and winning competitions on the Food Network. Her cookies are inventive and meticulously decorated, adopting 3D shapes and ingenious effects that I’d never even imagined cookies could be or showcase. In the lead-up to Halloween, she’s published her very first cookbook so that fans and baking enthusiasts can try making some of her amazing creations at home, too!

The theming is, ofc, edible spookiness. Interestingly, the book starts with an entire chapter on royal icing: what it is, how to make it, and how to get it to exactly the right consistency. This is going to be key for most of the cookies in the book. A few (relatively) simple cookie recipes follow before instructions for the real showstoppers begin.

The recipes here include instructions for zombie cookies you can pull apart for maximum goo, as well as crystal ball and zombie-tini cookies that you can actually see through. There are also cookies shaped like a filled and bubbling 3D cauldron, and a bookcase you can take and remove book-shaped cookies from. Following on this theme are treats you can actually play games on, from a tic-tac-toe board to corpse cookies that you can remove parts from a la Operation. There are over thirty astonishing recipes in here that are guaranteed to impress at your next Spooky Season party or cookie swap.

Ms Thi takes pains to stress that making cookies should be fun, with a list of Dos and Don’ts beforehand for readers trying out her more complex recipes. The instructions are all very clear and encouraging, with tons of step-by-step photos. After weeks of stressing out over this book, however, I have come to the conclusion that I am just far too neurotic to attempt any of them, as even the process of making cutout cookies is too much for me, lol. I’d really love to hear if any of you readers who are far better than me at things like this have a chance to make any of these recipes tho. In the meantime, I will enjoy the beautiful presentation of photos and text in this book, and wholeheartedly encourage anyone who wants to try their hand at elaborate and impressive Halloween treats to check out this volume, too, especially in light of the upcoming holiday!

Spookie Cookies by Karen Thi was published September 1 2026 by Page Street Publishing and is available from all good booksellers, including