Halloween is just around the corner, and we know families across the nation are busy planning awesome Halloween parties for their little ones! We wanted to incorporate something fun into our spooky spread of desserts to celebrate this year, so we came up with an interesting idea to try...We all know the phrase "trick-or-treat," but we thought, why not have BOTH?!

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Now, disclaimer* — we are book makers, not bakers.

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BUT...We thought it would be a fun kitchen project to try and wanted to see how it turned out! So, without further ado, we present to you our: SPOOKY SPIDER WEB COVERED CANDIES. See the video below for quick run through. Scroll down for the full "spider web" recipe.

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Let's start with how we came up with this idea. First, we wanted to make some Halloween-themed cupcakes to serve as treats for our party. That part was a little more straight-forward: cupcake mix, frosting (food-colored to suit our designs),  marshmallows, sprinkles, and candy eyeballs. We wanted to make some jack-o-lantern pumpkin cupcakes, ghost cupcakes, and Frankenstein cupcakes. For the jack-o-lanterns, we used food dye to color the frosting orange, and drew the eyes, nose, and mouth with black icing. The ghosts were simply white frosting with eyes and a mouth drawn with black icing. The Frankensteins were chocolate frosting topped with and green glitter sprinkles, and green-dyed marshmallows decorated with candy eyeballs and other features drawn with black icing (scars, hair, eyebrows, frowns).

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Next, when we imagined how we'd set everything up, we thought about the concept of having a trick and a treat, and wondered if there was a way to use cotton candy as decorative spider web filler around our cupcakes. However, the regular cotton candy was a little too puffed up, so we wondered if there was a way to make it have a stringy appearance. A couple quick internet searches later, we discovered an ancient technique that could easily still be done today— Dragon's Beard Candy. Originating from China around the Han Dynasty (206 BC—220 AD), it is essentially hand-pulled cotton candy. It is carefully stretched by hand and folded around 12 to 15 times, creating long, hair-thin strands of candy to be enjoyed— thus earning the name of Dragon's Beard. It originated in China, but over time has spread to other areas across Asia, Eastern Europe, and even North America. The strands of sugar are traditionally wrapped around a nut filling (peanuts, coconut, etc.).

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We wanted to do our own take on this for our dessert platter, so we tried it out! We'll include the recipe below if you want to try it, too! First, here are some important things we discovered in the making of our spider web candy:

• Set your candy thermometer on your saucepan before adding your ingredients, and once added DO NOT STIR THE INGREDIENTS. This will allow air into your mixture that will ruin the consistency needed for it to get stringy.
• Make sure you lightly brush a little water on the sides of your saucepan as the mixture cooks to prevent sugar crystals from forming. If these crystals form, your batch will be ruined.
• We made 2 batches, but the first didn't quite turn out the way it was supposed to— it began to fall apart when we raised it a little to high off of the plate during the pulling process, making it get a little out of control and no longer able to be pulled in a uniform way. We advise keeping the loop fairly tight and low to your corn starched surface, running the bottom of the loop through the cornstarch as you pull.
• When pulling the sugar, make sure to pull gently at first and just let it guide you— you'll be able to feel it as you go.
• If your attempts don't quite work out like our first one didn't, don't worry! We used our first batch as a spider web base to set our cupcakes and treats on top off and it worked out just fine.

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The Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 cup water, dyed with a few drops of food coloring
• About a cup of corn starch (keep the container nearby in case you need more).

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Supplies:

• Saucepan
• Food dye of choice
• Round plastic containers that aren't too rigid (you'll need it to give a little when squeezed)
• Candy thermometer
• Basting brush and a small reserve of water

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Step 1:

Arrange candy thermometer on saucepan and add ingredients. DO NOT STIR INGREDIENTS.

Step 2:

On just over medium heat, heat the mixture to 268℉. Use the candy thermometer to ensure you reach this temperature. As the mixture is heating up, make sure to lightly brush a little water on the sides of your pan to prevent sugar from crystallizing. Once temperature is reached, gently remove pan from heat.

Step 3:

Let the mixture cool down to about 215℉ (still in saucepan with candy thermometer attached). Once cooled to this temperature, pour mixture into your plastic containers. You want to have a puck sized shape in the end to work with. Do not pour all of the mixture into only one container (we used 3).

Step 4:

Let mixture cool in containers to room temperature.

Step 5:

Once cooled, remove puck from container (work with one puck at a time, or one puck per person if you have multiple people working on it). Your puck should be pliable enough to work with your hands. If your puck is a little too hard, you can put it back in the container and microwave for a few seconds (10 or less).

Step 6:

Pour your cornstarch onto a surface (we used a large baking sheet) and cover your puck with cornstarch. Then, form a hole in the middle of the puck, resulting in a donut shape. From there, stretch your donut out to about a 15 inch circumference and fold in a figure 8 shape. Continue to pull your sugar, now in a double loop, and fold again (figure 8) when the strands become a little thinner.

Step 7:

Repeat the pull and fold method for a total of about 14 times. Make sure to keep your loops fairly tight and low against your surface, dusting the strands in the cornstarch as you go.

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The result should be thousands of strands of spiderweb like candy to use as you wish!

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Again, we are book makers, not bakers— surely those of you out there who are pros in the kitchen can come up with amazing displays for your spiderweb candy! The video above shows off our little set up with our decorated cupcakes, along with some extra marshmallow ghosts and Halloween candies thrown in— and of course, some fake spiders for the full effect! Our original idea was to create a spiderweb "curtain" that the kids would be dared to reach behind to see if it's a trick or a treat— but when our first batch didn't quite work out, we had to scrap that idea and make our platter instead. We think it's fun to trick some of the littles by covering their treats in a "spiderweb" and daring them to eat it (them not knowing that it's actually candy)— you can even gross them out and eat a piece right in front of them for fun! The web is light and fluffy, really like cotton candy, just in a different shape.

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We hope you've enjoyed reading about our fun attempt at repurposing an ancient Chinese technique for a modern spooktacular dessert! Now go try it and have fun creating!

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Happy Halloween!

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