Who else is excited about Halloween? It’s one of my family’s favorite holidays, and we look forward to it all year long. We like to decorate the house top to bottom at the beginning of October, and we plan out a month full of fun Halloween activities. Some of our favorite traditions are visiting the pumpkin patch, taking a drive to see the fall leaves, and trick-or-treating at our local zoo. We always make sure to throw in some fun food-related traditions as well, like dipping caramel apples and making homemade doughnuts. It’s like a Halloween party at our house all month long! Of course, one of my favorite ways to celebrate is by baking, and I love when I can get the kids involved too. We made these sugar cookie spiders this week together, and my girls loved them! They were able to help me with mixing the dough together, rolling the balls of dough, and decorating the cute little spiders on top. It was a fun family activity, and the cookies turned out delicious!
I was inspired by these adorable spider cookies from Cincy Shopper, but I thought it would be fun to make the cookies using sugar cookie dough instead of peanut butter cookie dough. I really love how the flavors blend so well, and my trusty sugar cookie recipe is always fantastic!
Sugar Cookie Spiders
The full recipe is at the bottom of this post, but here’s what you’ll need:
butter sugar eggs vanilla flour baking powder salt Reese’s mini cups small candy eyes chocolate candy melts
The sugar cookie dough is quick and easy to mix up, and I love that it only has seven ingredients! The dough ends up being nice and thick, which makes it easy to roll into balls. I’ve gotten the best results when I’ve chilled the dough for at least 30 minutes, but sometimes when I’m in a hurry, I skip chilling, and they still turn out pretty great.
The cookies bake up so puffy and fat and thick. I love it!
When the cookies have cooled, it’s time to decorate them! I used chocolate candy melts to draw the legs and to stick everything together. If you don’t have them, you could also use melted chocolate chips or any kind of melting chocolate. I just like the candy melts because they’re so easy to use!
You’ll make a circle of chocolate on top of the cookie for the Reese’s cup to sit on, then pipe the little spider legs sticking out from the center. Don’t worry if your piping skills aren’t perfect (as mine certainly aren’t). The cookies will turn out great anyway!
Put the Reese’s cup upside down on top of the chocolate, then pipe a little extra chocolate on the front and attach the candy eyes. So easy and so cute!
It took me less than ten minutes per sheet to decorate all of the spiders, and they turned out so cute. Anything with googly eyes is bound to be adorable, right?
These cookies would be perfect for a Halloween party, or just a fun Halloween activity with your little ones! I think they would also be great for an insect birthday party or just as a treat for kiddos who love creepy-crawlies.
I used Reese’s candies because they are my husband’s favorites, but you could also use Rolos or Whoppers for the spider’s body instead. The candy eyes are definitely mandatory, though! 🙂
My kids absolutely loved making these with me, and have already requested that we add them to our fall bucket list every year. They’re so cute and easy that I think we will!
These sugar cookie spiders are so adorable, and so easy to make! They’re the perfect treat to make with the kids for Halloween!
