Halloween Spider Cookies

We are the first to admit these 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.)

This recipe from Jen’s Favorite Cookies has never let us down, although we add a little more than a stick of butter, for good measure (you could probably go down to 1¾ cup sugar, too). As she notes in her post, the best way to make the spiders is to dip a toothpick into the molten (carefully placed) 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…