Spider Cookies
Bake up these adorable sweet treats for Halloween using your favorite cookie dough recipe or try the brown sugar cookie dough recipe below. They are a delish take on white sugar cookies, but with a deeper flavor because of the brown sugar you and don't even need to pull a mixer out to make them! Then embellish with some additional chocolate candies. Who says spiders are scary?
Spider Cookies
Serving Approx. 30 cookies
Ingredients
For the Cookie Dough:
- 2 c (280 grams) Better Batter All-Purpose Flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch or arrowroot powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3/4 c unsalted butter, melted
- 1 1/4 c packed dark brown sugar (or light brown works too!)
- 1 egg, room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 c granulated sugar, for rolling
Spider Embellishments:
- individually wrapped Reese's Peanut Butter Cups miniatures (unwrapping them cleanly is easier if they are chilled first)
- 1 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
- candy eyes (I found some by Betty Crocker in the baking aisle of my grocery store).
Instructions
Baker's Note: This dough needs to chill at least 2 hours or up to overnight, so include that in your timing as you make this recipe.
Mix the Dry Ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cornstarch or arrowroot powder, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
Mix the Wet Ingredients. Whisk the melted butter and brown sugar until no sugary lumps remain. Add in the egg and stir until incorporated, then whisk in the vanilla.
Combine Wet and Dry Ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together with the spatula. The dough will be very soft and thick.
Cover well and chill for at least two hours or up to overnight. Chilling this dough is required to achieve the shape of these cookies without spreading like crazy during baking.
Bake. Pull the dough out of the refrigerator and allow to barely soften at room temperature while you preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
Pour the granulated sugar into a shallow bowl. Form dough balls approximately the size of a golf ball, then roll in sugar. Repeat until all dough is used. Stagger 9-10 cookies on each parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 8-9 minutes, rotating the pan half way though the baking time.
Remove from the oven and gently press the center of each cookie down with a teaspoon to make a flattened area for the peanut butter cup to sit. Cool 1 minute on the cookie sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Decorate. Melt 1 c chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl on medium-high power in 30 second increments. Stir with a plastic spoon or spatula in between. Once completely melted and smooth, transfer melted chocolate into a sandwich- or quart-sized freezer bag (thinner bags may break or leak) and seal out as much air as possible.
Trim a very small corner to make a piping bag. Pipe a small circle of chocolate onto the center of the cookie and top with a peanut butter cup then pipe on eight legs.
Add a tiny dab of chocolate to the back of the candy eyes and affix to the side of the peanut butter cup. Repeat with remaining cookies. Let chocolate set up before serving. These cookies will stay soft for up to a week when stored at room temperature in an air tight container.
Adapted from Sally's Baking Addiction and She Saved blog.
