Halloween Oreos: Spider Cookies

Get in the Halloween mood without baking a thing! You can decorate store bought cookies with spider webs and raisin spiders to make these simple and ghoulishly fun Halloween Oreos! Sponsored by Sun-Maid Raisins.

Decorating cookies for any holiday or season is a favorite past time for the kids and I. It is not only fun, but a fabulous way to get creative without dealing with the complex rules normally associated with baking and cooking.

It’s like coloring and painting with sugar – hello?! Now that’s crazy fun! With Halloween around the corner, it’s totally time for cookie decorating. So let’s get in the spirit of the holidays without busting into cold sweats.

Why these cookies are so great

Royal icing is easy to work with. The hardest part is getting the right consistency. But since we are using a marbling technique, and a little drippage makes these cookies even spookier, well it is pretty goof proof.

Usually you have to be super skilled to make those fancy schmancy halloween cookies. This technique can be done on home baked cookies or you can do what I did, and decorate store bought Oreos to make some Halloween Oreos.

For the royal icing recipe, I did not use any meringue powder or egg whites. It takes a little longer to dry, but that wasn’t a problem for me. I live in San Diego, it is dry here. A few hours and everything was dry.

If you want the icing to dry relatively quickly (less than an hour) than use meringue powder or follow my egg white royal icing recipe.

Ingredients you need

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• Powdered Sugar: For the royal icing you need powdered sugar and not regular granulated sugar.
• Black and Purple food coloring: For my web colors I chose black and purple. You can use other colors if you prefer.
• Water: Royal icing is made with powdered sugar and a liquid. I normally use water, but some people use milk. If you use milk, you have to refrigerate the cookies.
• Oreo Cookies: I liked the Oreos as they are a great dark background that is perfect for Halloween. You can use any kind of cookie, homemade or store-bought.
• Raisins: The body of the spider for these spider cookies is made with raisins. You could also use brown M&Ms or chocolate covered raisins.
• Chocolate Jimmies: These are used for the legs of the spider.

Step-by-Step Directions

1. Add 1 cup of powdered sugar in a small bowl with black food coloring and in another bowl add the other cup of powdered sugar with purple food coloring (red and blue). In a third bowl add 1 ½ cups powdered sugar.

2. Slowly add up to 2 teaspoon water into each bowl and stir with a fork or whisk until icing is smooth, but thick. You want it pourable, but not runny.

3. Pour each icing into its own resealable bag and squeeze icing into one corner. Snip a tiny piece of the corner of the bag off and place each bag in a glass, cut tip side down.

4. Place 1 cookie on work surface and Start piping an outline of a circle along the edge of the cookie. Once outline is done, fill in center with white icing.

5. Use a toothpick or bamboo skewer to spread icing evenly.

6. Starting at the center of the cookie, pipe a spiral of purple or black for the web.

7. Turn and spiral the icing outwards towards the edge of the cookie. Don’t worry if your spiral is wobbly looking or uneven. The next step will make it all alright.

8. Once your spiral is done, use a tooth pick or bamboo skewer and place it at the center of the cookie. Then slowly drag it through the icing towards the edge of the cookie. Continue dragging the toothpick like this around the rest of the cookie, and ta-dah! You have a spiderweb.

9. While the icing is wet, place 1 raisin, for the spider’s body anywhere on the cookie and place 4 chocolate jimmies on one side of the raisin for the spider’s legs and 4 more on the other side.

10. Using white icing, add two tiny dots for eyes and let cookie dry.

11. Continue icing the other cookies. Allow icing to cool completely before handling, about 1 hour.

Expert Tips and Recipe FAQS

So this Halloween Oreo is definitely a “low skills required” kinda decorating project. I usually have a steady hand with piping, but I was off on the video day and they still look cute. My 12-year old daughter even joined in on the decorating fun, so this is very kid friendly.

• This is a great cookie decorating project to do for a Halloween party. Just set up the work stations and let the kids have fun decorating!
• You can also use pre-made cookie icing which come in their own squeeze bottles for even easier decorating and less work.
• Try other Halloweeny colors like orange, green and brown.

Oreos also come in fun colors and flavors during the holidays. So you can also use orange filled

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Disclosure: I did receive a stipend from Sun-Maid Raisins to develop a recipe using their raisins. The story I have written is all true, and the opinions are truly mine. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t blog about it.