How To Make Dexter Cookies: A Recipe By Zac Little

Last year I posted this recipe over at the now-defunct angryfilmsproductions.com. I'm reprinting it here in case you all need some last-minute ideas for holiday parties.

So the hardest part is going to be the dough, which is just a ridiculous amount of powdered sugar and an inconceivable amount of flour. I mean, there’s other stuff, but mostly you’re going to be shocked about how much flour there is. I did a size comparison for you, since you might not be able to determine the size of the bowl on your own. Look, it’s bigger than Jesus. Get it? You get it.


That’s half because I doubled the recipe. There is a recipe by the way, and it’s probably the same in every cookbook. It was invented by somebody—Julia Child’s great-grandmother, probably—and we’re stuck with it whether or not it is the optimal sugar cookie recipe, which is probably isn’t. But it does the job. But just look it up because I’m not going to write the whole thing out. You need butter, eggs, almond extract, vanilla extract, and baking powder, and obviously you need an oven and a bowl, and probably other stuff.

And then you need to stir it, and you’re going to need a tool for that. I’ve got this mass-destruction looking Hamilton-Beach thing we’ve never really been able to find a use for. It looks like it could do a number on somebody’s kneecaps, but it turns out it’s not very good with dough.

What I did wrong was I didn’t wait for the butter to soften, so after 20 minutes of mashing that tool against the bricks of butter I was ready to throw the whole bowl into the front yard and be done with it.
But I persevered, and eventually I had something that sort of looked like dough. That’s when you cover it and put it in the fridge for two hours.

If you’re wondering “when do I start drinking?” This is where you start drinking.


By the time the dough is ready you should be prepared to tango with it again. Use a rolling pin to flatten it out—if you’re like me this will take several tries. And don’t forget to lightly flour the pin and the surface on which you are rolling, because otherwise all of your dough will get stuck to the pin and you’ll want to fucking kill yourself. Eventually the dough will look like a Mercator projection of Russia, which is when it is ready.


You can use a gingerbread-man cut out if you want, but I couldn’t find a good one, so I just did my man outline freehand. You can also trace a GI Joe or something, but use pencil, not pen, so you can erase it off the dough before you put it in the oven.

Once you’ve got the man, you’ve got to dissect him. Think like Dexter. Where are the optimal cuts so you can fit the whole body in the trash bag?

There’s a second way if you don’t have the patience for cutting up the body, which is just to cut a bunch of nonsense shapes out of the dough. You have to figure that dismembered body parts sitting in a bag at the bottom of the ocean would eventually stop looking like much of anything.

You’ve got your shapes, so sprinkle them with sugar and cook them. While they’re cooking (375 F for 7 minutes or so) you can get the next batch of dough ready. If you’re like me you’ll get ahead of yourself, so make funny shapes with the dough for laughs.

In case you are wondering what your penis would look like if you ever mashed it up with a rolling pin, this is what it would look like:

Once the cookies have baked and cooled, you have to decorate them. If you don’t have any ideas but you’ve got plenty of frosting, you can practice designs on your face.


I recommend black and red frosting, but if you want to get really gory you could incorporate some green. These are how mine turned out.

Now take a break and restore your electrolytes. Making cookies is draining and you’re not done yet.


The presentation is the key. Emeril once said “give me a sprig of parsley and a slice of lime and I could make your own ears look like an appetizing meal!” Or anyway, the story goes that that’s what he said to Jimmy Hoffa.

You need black trash bags and twist ties. Distribute the cookies evenly and bag them up.

Now your countertop should look like the Bay Harbor Butcher’s dumping ground, but for added effect, if you wrap the bags tight enough, you can always sink them to the bottom of a fish tank as a nice little display.


There you have it! The perfect stocking stuffer for your loved ones, co-workers, cab drivers, whatever! It works for everyone! Provided they watch Dexter. Otherwise explaining yourself is kind of difficult.