Arachnophobia Cookies

Creepy crawlies! Honestly though, a grand total of three of my spiders actually look like spiders and the rest of them really look like dark brown crabs, don't they? Being covered in a swarm of crabs and three spiders does sound fairly scary too though, doesn't it? These are adapted from the Spider Infested Cookies that I blogged about last year, which were originally and brilliantly created by Beth of the Hungry Happenings blog. It just seemed natural to terrorize the poor gingerbread people with spiders because I do seem to enjoy torturing the poor dears. Remember the Man-Eating Burgers, the Spooky Dinner, and the Coffin Cake? And now I've unleashed a horde of spiders upon them. Just for fun. Because I am eeeeevil!

These are, as you have probably already deducted, impossibly easy to make. All you need is a batch of your favorite cut-out cookies, chocolate chips, an extra handful of melted chocolate chips to draw the spiders' legs, and a simple icing of powdered sugar and water to draw the scared facial features. Here's a quick, slightly useful step-by-stepper:

I used this Coconut Oil Shortbread for my cookies, but I used half regular sugar and half powdered sugar to keep them nice and tender (thanks for the powdered sugar tip, Mihl!). Instead of mixing the chocolate chips into the dough I actually pressed them into the raw gingerdudes just before they went in the oven to create a "climbing up" pattern. The dough shouldn't be rolled out too thin or you won't be able to insert the chocolate chips all the way in. The coconut oil shortbread recipe yielded eight average-sized gingerbread men (or shortbread men) cookies. I did use a toothpick to poke the melted chocolate chips in a failed attempt to make them look furry, as pictured on the step-by-step thingie, but I'm not sure that was worth the effort. Don't bother with it if you don't think it would add any extra creepiness to your spiders. 

If you've never made a simple powdered sugar icing before, all you need to do is mix about a half cup of powdered sugar with only a few drops of water until you end up with a pasty concoction. It shouldn't be fluid enough but not overly runny or your icing will not hold its shape when you pipe it onto the cookies. Then cut off a tiny bit of one the corners of a ziploc bag and scoop the icing into it. Now you can squeeze the icing out through the little hole in the corner of the bag and draw the shortbread men's facial features with it. You can use a drop or two of food coloring if you want to use different colors for the mouths and eyebrows, or you can use carrot juice or beet juice or any sort of highly-pigmented fruit or vegetable juice to color your icing instead of using plain water, or you can just leave it all white. My terrified cookies have a dot of melted chocolate chips on their eyeballs.

Just when these poor shortbread men think things could not get any worse, then you go and do this...

Ouch! Alrighty then, now I can say that I have contributed something to this year's Halloweegan festivities. What do you think? Are these arachnophobia cookies or are they really crabophobia cookies or whatever a fear of crabs is called? Either way, I hope you've enjoyed this spooky post! There may be one more last-minute Halloween post coming up soon. It might involve fondant! Or should I say FUN-dant? No? Sorry. I'll never say that again.

Happy weekend! *POOF* (That was me disapparating.)