Spooky HERSHEY’S Halloween Spider Cookie Recipe

Witchie, Witchie – Screamie, Screamie – Happy, Happy Halloweenie!… Halloween is one of my holidays of the year. {Christmas and Easter are my other two faves.} There are SO many creative ways to celebrate this time of year – carving pumpkins, decorating the yard for trick or treaters, making costumes, and I love, love, love all of the super fun, spooky kids food and snack ideas. I wanted a few new recipes to make with our extra Halloween candy, and got the inspiration for these Spooky HERSHEY’S Spider Cookies from the Ritzy Halloween Spiders from Sprinkled with Flour, that I found on Pinterest. Check ’em out… These were super simple to make – easy enough that even Abby {who’s two} was able to help me in the kitchen. You’ll need a few bags of yummy HERSHEY’S candy, including HERSHEY’S chocolate bars to melt, and REECE’S Peanut Butter Cups. In total, here are the supplies that you’ll need:

• HERSHEY’S Chocolate bars
• REECE’S Peanut Butter Cups
• Stick Pretzles
• Shortening {optional}
• Ritz or other similar style crackers
• Mini REECE’S Peanut Butter Baking Chips
• Black icing mini-tube

You should be able to find all of these in the baking section at any local grocery store. The Mini REECE’S baking chips should be near the regular chocolate chips. If you can’t find them, you could also use regular REECE’S, your spiders will just have slightly larger eyes. The steps to create these little guys are super simple – but of course, I forgot to take pics of the process as we went along. If you’d like to see a few step-by-step pics on how to create the spider cookies, check out the post from Sprinkled With Flourthat inspired me. Mine are made a little differently though – Here are the simple steps to create fun little spider cookies to spook your kids too:

1. Melt your chocolate HERSHEY’S bars. To melt them, break them into a couple of pieces, and toss ’em all into a big microwave-safe bowl. Heat them for about 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between, until fully melted and smooth. You can add a little bit of shortening if you need it, to make it easier to dip your crackers into.
2. Now take half of your crackers, and dip them into the melted chocolate, then set them down on waxed paper to cool. If you get finger prints on them, just use a finger to kind of swirl the chocolate after placing onto the wax paper.
3. Next, break your pretzel sticks in half, and dip just one end into the remaining melted chocolate. Place these on waxed paper too, to cool and harden.
4. Once your crackers are set, you’re ready to make your spiders. Layer an uncoated cracker, a REECE’S Peanut Butter Cup, then a coated cracker. Heat in sets in the microwave for 20-30 seconds, to slightly melt the Peanut Butter Cup.
5. Carefully remove them from the microwave, and quickly assemble the rest – stick 3 pretzel sticks into each side, and add your two little mini-REECE’S to the top as eyes. Once they’ve fully cooled down, you can use the little tube of icing to add details to the eyes too, if desired.

BAM! You’re done – and the kids are going to LOVE these semi-spooky Halloween treats. I mean, who doesn’t totally love peanut butter and chocolate, right? When you add the saltiness of the crackers and pretzles too – well, let’s just say, you’re going to eat more than one!

For more fun Halloween ideas, make sure to visit my Trick or Treat Pinterest Board. And if you have a favorite Halloween recipe, craft, game, decorating idea, or tradition– make sure to leave a comment or a link on my Facebook post – I’ll share my favorites every day until Halloween. I love hearing from you guys, and can’t wait to see the cool ideas you come up with too!

Happy Halloween! And if you enjoyed this post – be sure to share it!