Dexter Premier Party 2012

Every year my husband and I attend a Dexter premier party at our friend's house. In case you've never heard of the television show before (Where have you BEEN the past 6 years?), I'll quickly summarize it for you. Dexter Morgan is a blood spatter forensic analyst for the Miami Police Department. With the exception of a couple people, none of the other characters know that by night Dexter is also a serial killer. The T.V. show is filled with flashbacks which reveal that Dexter's obsession with blood and supposed "need" to kill date back to his childhood. We also know from the flashbacks that Dexter's adoptive father knew about these tendencies and taught him a set of "rules" to abide by. Dexter has lived by these rules (mostly) - By never getting caught, never telling anyone, and by only harming people who have committed horrific crimes, themselves (many of Dexter's victims are also serial killers).
Obsessed with blood as he is, Dexter keeps blood samples on slides which he collects by slicing each victim's cheek. And knowledgeable in forensics as he is, he takes certain steps (such as covering the entire area with plastic sheeting, tying down the victims to a "kill table" with plastic wrap, putting the bodies in black trash bags, and dumping the wrapped bodies deep in the ocean) to ensure that his killings go unnoticed. The only reason I reveal these gruesome details to you is so that you will better understand these positively disgusting cookies I made. :)

As usual, I failed to take pictures of the process of making them. I promise I will try harder the next time!
I have to admit, everything seemed to be going wrong at first when making these cookies.. and by time I got around to icing the final details it was about 9:00 at night and I was exhausted! I cut some corners - making the icing on the details too thin,  and it spread. But, I think they turned out not too shabby, all considering. :)

Here's what I did:
I started out with my all time favorite sugar cookie recipe (which I will post at a later date). I cut them into gingerbread-man shapes. When finished, they were topped with royal icing (also a recipe I need to post). I didn't have many food colorings to work with so I combined a drop of orange and a drop of brown. That seemed to work out decent enough. For the body parts - I cut the cookies into pieces after baking them. My reasoning behind this was that I didn't want to risk not baking them evenly since the pieces were going to be all different sizes. But in retrospect, it may have been a better idea to cut them into pieces BEFORE baking them. Cutting them afterwards turned out to be a big, crumbly mess! To help seal in the crumbs and to also add to the gory affect, I dipped the ends in red candy melts. You may buy these in the baking section of any craft store. You may also add 2 or three green colored candy melts to the red in order to make the color a little more convincing. I also stuck some bone-shaped sprinkles into the wet chocolate, which made them 100% more AWESOME! ;) After the gingerbread body parts were all dry and set, I placed them in black plastic which was cut from a black plastic table cloth (found at the party store). I tied them with yellow embroidery floss.

For the tables:
Dip a whole graham cracker in chocolate or white chocolate. Dip four pretzel rods into chocolate. Don't bother dipping them all the way to the end, since the ends will later be discarded (eaten) anyway.  Once these have all set, gently saw the ends off the pretzel rods so that they are the same length. Dip the very ends of trimmed pretzel rods into chocolate and stick onto graham crackers. Be sure to let them set thoroughly before flipping the table over. In order to stay true to the television show, I wrapped each gingerbread man onto the table with a small piece of plastic wrap. I also flung some red melted chocolate onto white plates in order to "Dexterize" them a little more. :)

Here are a few more photos. Have a fabulous day!!!