Peanut Butter Spider Cookies
These Peanut Butter Spider Cookies are not only adorable & delicious, but they're the perfect halloween treat to make with your kids or for a party! A soft-baked, thick, and chewy peanut butter cookie topped with Reese's peanut butter cups, candy eyeballs, and icing legs to resemble a cute but creepy spider.
Servings 24
Calories 175kcal
Ingredients
Peanut Butter Cookies
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter softened
- 1/2 cup white granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1¾ cups + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon table salt (increase to ½ teaspoon if using unsalted butter)
Spiders
- 24 Reese's miniature peanut butter cups (wrapped individually in gold foil)
- 48 small candy eyeballs
- black cookie icing (store-bought in the baking aisle)
Instructions
- Using a mixing bowl with an electric hand mixer, or you can use a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, sugar, and light brown sugar on medium speed for at least 2 minutes. * It's important to beat for 2 minutes until it's much lighter in color and it's fluffy and creamy looking. We really want to whip a lot of air into it, which means soft and fluffy cookies.
- Add in the creamy peanut butter and mix until combined.
- Add the egg and vanilla extract. Beat just until the egg is incorporated into the dough.
- Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat on low speed just until combined and no flour pockets remain in the dough. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- Shape the cookie dough into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Also, place the 24 Reese's (still with the gold wrapper on) inside the fridge to chill while the cookie dough is chilling. * The Reese's will stay intact, which means a prettier spider, if you peel the wrapper off while they're cold.
- Preheat the oven to 350° F. Prepare two cookie sheets/baking sheets by lining with parchment paper.
- Take the Reese's from inside the fridge and unwrap them. Place them into a bowl and put them back into the fridge until you're ready to use them.
- Create 1-inch balls of cookie dough and place them onto a cookie sheet. Bake 12 cookies per cookie sheet. * I like to use a small cookie scoop for this but you can just use your hands and guess about the size. It's about 1 tablespoon of dough.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes or just until the cookies look puffy (but no browning) and they begin to crack.
- Immediately press a Reese's into the center of each cookie. Remove the cookies to a cooling rack so they can cool completely. * You don't want to leave the cookies, with the Reese's on them, on the cookie sheet for too long otherwise the Reese's will melt. Move them to a cooling rack after you press the Reese's in.
Spiders
- Once cooled completely, use the black cookie icing to draw on the legs. 8 legs per cookie with 4 legs on each side of the Reese's. Dab a little black icing onto the back of the eyeball and adhere two eyeballs onto the front side of the Reese's. Make sure that you're positioning the eyes in the center of the two sets of legs on either side.
Notes
Cookie Shape Tip : I like to use a round biscuit cutter or a glass cup, to shape the warm cookies after I have placed the Reese's on them. Simply put the biscuit cutter or cup over the cookie, and then gently swirl to create a prettier and more rounder cookie shape. You don't have to do this, it's optional and something I like to do with all cookies.
Reese's : It's important to let the still wrapped Reese's chill in the fridge alongside the dough. The wrapper peels off much easier when they're cold. Otherwise, when you try to unwrap room temperature Reeses, there is always some of the chocolate that comes off with the wrapper. Chilling them makes this not happen.
It's so important that you put on a chilled & cold Reese's. If the Reese's is room temperature it will just melt all over the warm cookie and not hold up to form the spider's body,
Variation Tips : If you can't find the candy eyeballs there are a couple subs you can try. Cut small pieces of a mini marshmallow and adhere them onto the Reese's with the sticky side of it. Then dab a small amount of black icing in the middle of the marshmallow for the eye. You can also just buy some white cookie icing and create eyeballs with it and then use the black icing to dab an eye in the center.
For the legs, you can also use melted chocolate (inside a Ziploc bag with the corner snipped) or buy some chocolate frosting and put it inside a piping bag + small tip and pipe on the legs.
Nutrition
Calories: 175kcal | Carbohydrates: 21g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 9g | Saturated Fat: 4g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 3g | Trans Fat: 0.2g | Cholesterol: 19mg | Sodium: 154mg | Potassium: 75mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 13g | Vitamin A: 138IU | Vitamin C: 0.02mg | Calcium: 16mg | Iron: 1mg