Awful Arachnids

These edible spiders are made from Royal Icing, which needs to be used right away since it hardens to a rocklike texture very quickly! Mix up the Royal Icing per the recipe, and add black gel food colouring to get the mixture as dark as you can. It will dry a darker colour than your wet icing looks. I only made a third of the Royal Icing recipe and I still had tons of icing left over after making two dozen spiders.

These are very fragile, especially peeling off the waxed paper, since the legs tend to break off. Place gently around your party table for a spooky look, but if you place near moisture, you might have a black food colouring mess that will be difficult to clean!

I used a decorating tube to pipe the icing into spider shapes on waxed paper. If your hand gets sore from piping spiders like mine does, put a toothpick in the piping tube nozzle so the icing doesn't dry and plug the nozzle. Taking breaks is good since the warmer the icing gets, the bigger and sloppier your lines are, so let the icing bag rest back to room temperature, then keep piping away until you get sick of spiders! For me that's usually about 3 dozen, or one cookie sheet full, and usually happens over the course of several days while watching TV and waiting for other Halloween recipes to set or bake. Once the spiders are dry, as long as they stay away from moisture, they will keep indefinitely.

TIP: If you are also icing cookies with Royal Icing, make one large batch, reserve about 1 cup in another bowl for your spiders and tighly cover. Thin the rest of the icing with corn syrup for smoothly-iced cookies, then you still have your stiff Royal Icing ready to be tinted black for spiders!