How to Make Cobwebs for Halloween Desserts
The ability to cook terrible desserts is an important skill in the month of October, especially if you live in a house with young people. There’s no shortage of goofy, creepy Halloween characters, but not everyone has the artistic skills to sculpt Count Chocula’s lipstick head. However, one of the easiest and creepiest decorations is the web, and you don’t need talent or even a steady hand to make it.
Unlike applying icing or icing an entire cake (which requires patience and a certain level of dexterity), creating a web pattern requires less precision than the consistency of the medium you’re working with. The easiest way to make a web pattern is to draw a spiral in a contrasting color to the background color and drag the spiral with lines from the center to the edges. From a confectionery point of view, this would be a version of marbling or feathering lines. And no, you don’t need a steady hand – although you do need to draw the spiral, as soon as you drag the lines the pattern will shift and no one will ever know if your initial spiral was terrible.
This doesn’t mean you can’t mess things up – you need to keep your components consistent. This mostly applies to chocolate because it will solidify when it cools down. If the “web” is too hard or the background color is frozen, the pattern will not stretch; it will just break and it will look terrible for other reasons.
If you’re dipping cookies in chocolate to make webs, keep the dark chocolate as hot as possible so it doesn’t burn, and use a microwave-safe dish. If it starts to cool and thicken, put it in the microwave for a few seconds to make it runny again. White chocolate can also be stored in a microwave-safe bowl, or a small disposable piping bag can be used. You can reheat them in the microwave for a few seconds and massage the white chocolate until it becomes liquid again. If you’re making marbled frosting or frosting, the temperature doesn’t matter, but be sure to drag the pattern right after creating the spiral. If you make a spiral and leave for 10 minutes, the icing will most likely set and not marble.
It is easy to start practicing this technique with contrast dough for cakes, brownies or cheesecakes, where temperature control is not so important. But if you want to challenge yourself with spider web cookies for Halloween, start with any sugar cookie recipe you like and use a cookie cutter to cut out circles. I started with this simple recipe from the Food Network and replaced two teaspoons of orange food coloring with an amount of milk to get an uncomfortable shade of orange (you can also mix red and yellow in a 1:2 ratio respectively).
Once the cookies have cooled, melt about four ounces of dark chocolate in a bowl in the microwave. Stir every 30 seconds and then as it melts, stir every seven seconds until smooth. Melt a couple of ounces of white chocolate in the same way. Place the melted white chocolate in a small piping bag, make a parchment cornet, or cut off the corner of the zippered bag if you don’t have piping bags. If you prefer visualization, check out this video on the feathering technique .
Dip one cookie in dark chocolate. Place it on a cooling rack or on parchment paper. Immediately use a piping bag to make a white chocolate spiral (you can also make an apple-shaped pattern out of three concentric circles if that’s easier for you). Immediately use a toothpick or the very tip of a small paring knife to draw a line from the center to the outer edge of the cookie. Turn the cookie or your body over and draw another line next to it. Continue this motion all the way around the circle, always dragging from the center to the outer edge. The hot chocolate will cover up any dips and you’ll end up with beautiful haunted cookies. Usually, for more efficiency, you need to dip all cookies, pass all lines, and then drag templates; but for marbling it is very important to make each cookie one at a time so that the dark chocolate does not harden before the white chocolate pattern is drawn. Microwave the chocolate periodically to keep the pattern smooth. You’ll know when the chocolate starts to set, as it won’t stretch as smoothly.
You can do this technique with contrasting colors of any batter, icing, or crumbly consistency icing. Just take a small amount of the base color and mix it with a little food coloring. Make a spiral and use a small knife to pull out the pattern. If you still feel unsure about the method, ask your child to do so. Most likely, their circle drawing skills are more advanced than yours.