Halloween Spider Cookies

We are the first to admit these Halloween spider cookies don’t qualify as “regional food”—unless, of course, you were to look at American holiday cuisine as a whole, but that’s a stretch, isn’t it? The thing is, we don’t bake much in the way of sweets, but these have become something of a Halloween tradition for us, delicious and adorable and simple to make, and therefore worth sharing with our food-loving readers. The “artistic” part of making those spiders is a bit labor-intensive, truth be told, but overall this is a pretty easy way to impress your friends/kids/coworkers. (And you get to eat the ones you mess up.)

We have used a recipe from a now-defunct website called Jen’s Favorite Cookies, but essentially, these are just chocolate chip cookies. Use your favorite recipe for that, but place some extra, full-size chocolate chips, pointed tip down, on the top of each cookie before you bake. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, get to work on those spider legs. The best way to make them is to dip a toothpick into the molten chocolate chips and lightly dot-dot-dot those legs out. Yes, all eight of them. Anatomical accuracy is important!

Happy Halloween, all! Now back to our regularly scheduled world-food coverage…