Halloween Pretzel Spider Webs Tutorial

I’m having so much fun with the Halloween theme this year.  I had no idea there were so many fun things to try!  These Halloween pretzel spider webs were so cute! I picked up the ingredient at the bulk store on a whim, and they ended up turning out really well!

They are pretty simple.  You just need pretzel sticks and some white chocolate.  I just used Merckens white chocolate from the bulk store, but you can use Baker’s white chocolate or even white chocolate chips if you have them on hand.  I really enjoyed working with the Merckens, so I would definitely recommend those.

I laid out the pretzel sticks on my Silpat in a star shape.  You can probably go with fewer pretzels or even more pretzels if you want.  These end up being kind of on the large side, so I could only fit five on my baking sheet.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea how to melt chocolate.  I just put it in the microwave for two minutes at a time on ultra low power until it melted.

I think it ended up taking 5 minutes total in the microwave to completely melt.  You have to stir it until the little lumps are gone.

And being the thrifty person that I am, instead of using a pastry bag, I just used a zip-lock bag for the chocolate.  Just pour the chocolate into the bag, zip it up, and then cut off a small corner to ice it with.  I think I’d recommend to wait until the chocolate cools slightly before squeezing it out.  Mine was super warm and runny and I wasn’t able to get smooth lines out of it.

I enjoyed this part a lot more than I thought I would, but I did find it challenging.  You can see that my chocolate lines are all squiggly.  This is where letting it cool slightly would have worked out better.  Just start in the middle and work your way to the outside of the web.

I ended up taking the chocolate all the way to the outer edge, otherwise the webs looked more like a pirate ship’s steering wheel, which is really not what we are going for here.

I had no idea what to use for the spiders.  I saw some chocolate spiders and some people just used plastic spiders, but I was really hoping to use candy.  I didn’t find any candy spiders, so I just picked up some black licorice string.

I wasn’t sure this was going to work, but they turned out surprisingly well.  Cut the licorice into 1″ pieces and set them up on a plate in the shape of a spider.  Brown chocolate would probably look better here, but I just used the leftover white chocolate and put it on top for the spider body.  I put them in the freezer for 3 minutes to help speed up the hardening process.

At that point, my chocolate on my pretzels was too hard to stick the spiders to, so I just put some warm chocolate on the underside of the spiders and more or less “glued” them onto the spider webs.

I’m so pleased with how these came out though!  They are so much fun!

They would probably work with waxed paper too, but I really love using my Silpat for things like this.  It’s soooooo easy to just pull it back and even the thin chocolate pieces just peel right off really easily.

Mine ended up being a little messy since the chocolate part of the web was so skinny.  Once you took a bite or two they completely fell apart. I think next time I’ll make the white chocolate part thicker.

And as pretty as these are, they also tasted really good!  The chocolate and pretzel combination was surprisingly delicious!

My 3 year old really enjoyed these.  My 18 month old just wasn’t crazy about the pretzels, so they were a hard sell for her.  She pretty much picked off all the chocolate pieces and left the pretzels behind.

These were a little finicky to put together, but they were lots of fun.  I think they are the coolest Halloween snack ever!  But I think I’ll hold off making them again until my kids can actually appreciate how cool they really are.  A little appreciation would be nice!