Spider Web Cookies

I looooove Halloween-- Is it because my birthday is 3 days before Halloween? Um yes, most likely. I'm turning a whopping 22 tomorrow. Okay, back to the cookies... the possibilities are endless for Halloween baked goods and I'm loving every second of it. Unfortunately I only have a few days left to fit in all of my ideas! Last year I made some cupcakes that used the same technique to make spider webs on them but that was in my pre-blogging days so I didn't take pictures. I saw a picture of these spider web cookies over at Bake at 350 and decided I had to make them immediately. My first batch consisted of the black background with the purple and green web for the little girls in my dance class that I teach. I thought they were super cute but I showed my dad when I visited home for the weekend and he told me they were looked "psychedelic" and that he didn't know what they were. So then I made a batch with the white background with the black and orange webs and sent those off to my boyfriend and his family along with some of the pumpkin cookies I made earlier this week. Bridget at Bake at 350 has an awesome tutorial to make these cookies with lots of pictures so head over there if you need more pictures. I am still getting a hang of this photography thing and didn't take enough pictures. One day I promise I will start doing tutorials. Enjoy these cute little Halloween treats!

Ingredients:
Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing
Circular Cookie Cutter
Wilton Gel Icing (I used white, black, orange, purple, and leaf green in case you were wondering)
Toothpick

Directions:
Bake the cookies and prepare royal icing as instructed (just an FYI: the cookie recipe that I use made about 10 of these web cookies). To decorate, outline the cookies using either a #2 or #3 tip in the color of your choice (make it the same color as your background color). You can do either a circular pattern or a more weblike pattern--I did some of both. Let the outline dry for about an hour. Reserve some of the thicker icing to make the spiders at the end--use one of the web colors for this. Then, thin out the background icing as well as the icing being used for the webs all to the same consistency and put in squeeze bottles. Then flood the cookies with the background color. While the flood icing is still wet, use the squeeze bottles to make 3 circles of alternating colors. Then with a toothpick, start in the center of the cookie and drag the toothpick out to the edge of the outline to make a weblike pattern. Let dry for a few hours or overnight. When the icing is dry on the cookie, sing a #7 tip (or any other large circular tip) to pipe a circle with the thicker icing until it resembles the body of a circle. Then using a #2 tip pipe the legs of the spider. Let the cookie sit until it is dry.

Source: Adapted from Bake at 350