Eating Spiders

I like spiders.  As long as they do not bite me.  As revenge for the insect bites I have gotten in the past, I whipped up a batch of spider cupcakes to sink my teeth into.

Halloween is approaching, quickly.  How exciting!  Our fantastic resident Fun Food Friday blogger Amanda Seabolt is on bed rest, so I figured I would pick up the slack and bake something spooky. 

I found the coolest recipe for Halloween cupcakes online.  The first photo in the gallery is the example of what they are supposed to look like.  Cute, right?

Two problems arose in my baking adventure.  

Despite the fact that the BIGGEST candy holiday is just days away, I could not find black shoestring licorice anywhere!  Granted, by the time I started searching, it was 9PM on a school night, meaning some of the more "high end" candy stores were closed.  And, I figured Twizzlers Pull n Peel would work just fine for the legs.  

For the eyes, I was also supposed to use licorice, or other "eye type candy".  I had actually never seen the big multi colored licorice before I had lived in New Jersey, where everyone loved it.  I figured that it would be really easy to get here, I was just never looking for it.  No luck.

So, as the clock approached 11pm, there I was strolling back and forth in the candy aisle of Wal-mart trying to envision what would look the most like eyes.  I settled for jelly beans.

After baking and frosting the cupcakes I got to work on cutting and shredding the Twizzlers.  [I did attempt two spiders with normal black licorice legs, but they were horrendous].  The legs look strange, but not terrible.  The eyes are another story.  I really tried to make them look more life like, adding some leftover "sugar circles" from another project and only ended up making them worse.  



I just laughed and laughed.  They look like a preschooler's craft project.  But, they do taste good!