Description
Delightfully spooky Halloween Spider Cookies featuring a soft, buttery cookie base decorated with Maltesers, melted dark chocolate legs, and icing eyes. These festive treats are perfect for Halloween parties and are easy to prepare with basic ingredients and simple decorating steps.
Ingredients
Scale
Cookie Dough
- 150g butter
- ½ cup brown sugar (100g)
- ½ cup white sugar (110g)
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 2 cups plain flour (300g)
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 Tbsp cornflour
Decorations
- 140g bag Maltesers
- 100g dark chocolate, melted
- 1 small tube white icing
Instructions
- Melt Butter: In a large glass bowl, melt the butter in the microwave for 30 to 50 seconds until soft and partially melted.
- Mix Wet Ingredients: Whisk the melted butter, then add the brown sugar, white sugar, egg, and vanilla essence. Mix until smooth and no lumps remain.
- Add Dry Ingredients: Sift the plain flour, salt, baking soda, and cornflour over the wet mixture. Fold everything together gently until combined. The dough will be soft but thick.
- Chill Dough if Needed: If the dough is warm and too soft to handle, refrigerate or freeze it briefly until firm enough to roll into balls.
- Preheat Oven: Set your oven to 170°C fanbake to prepare for baking the cookies.
- Shape Cookies: Roll the dough into balls of approximately 2 tablespoons (30-40g) each. Place them on a lined baking tray and press down slightly.
- Bake: Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes until golden on the outside but still soft in the center. Remove from the oven.
- Insert Maltesers: While the cookies are still warm, gently push two Maltesers into each cookie to form the spider body.
- Cool Cookies: After 10 minutes on the baking tray, transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Prepare Chocolate Legs: Melt the dark chocolate completely, place into a small ziplock bag, and cut a tiny hole in one corner for piping.
- Decorate Legs: Pipe four chocolate legs on each side of the Maltesers to mimic spider legs.
- Add Eyes: Use the white icing to pipe two dots for the eyes on each spider body. Then, add small dots of dark chocolate inside the icing dots to create eyeballs.
- Set and Serve: Allow the chocolate legs and eyes to harden fully before serving the cookies.
- Storage: Store the decorated cookies in an airtight container for up to 1 week to maintain freshness.
Notes
- You can use a size 40mm cookie dough scoop to measure and shape the dough uniformly.
- To make chocolate chip cookies instead, mix in a cup of chocolate chips before chilling the dough.
- Candy eyeballs from specialty stores are a fun alternative to piping eyes with icing and chocolate.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie (approx. 40g)
- Calories: 180 kcal
- Sugar: 15 g
- Sodium: 90 mg
- Fat: 9 g
- Saturated Fat: 5 g
- Unsaturated Fat: 3 g
- Trans Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 22 g
- Fiber: 1 g
- Protein: 2 g
- Cholesterol: 30 mg
