Halloween is my favourite holiday, and I’m pretty excited that it’s a thing at my office (there is a costume competition between the departments). I saw these and instantly knew that I had to make them for my department! I made them yesterday so here is the recipe!

Chocolate Pretzel Webs

* Warning: this recipe took a lot longer to make than expected!! Do this when you have a lot of time (as in hours!), or, like me, when you’re hiding at your friends house avoiding the remnants of hurricane Sandy.

Ingredients:

• Pretzel sticks
• Semi-sweet chocolate (we used 2 bags of  President’s Choice semi-sweet chocolate chips (300 g each))
• White chocolate (optional) (we used 1 bag of  President’s Choice white chocolate chips (226 g))
• Plastic spiders (optional decorations)
• Ziplock bags and parchment paper

Step 1 – Melt the chocolate: Use a double broiler to melt the chocolate, we did them in two batches (one bag at a time). Fill a small pot halfway with water and bring to a boil on medium heat. Place a heat-safe bowl on top of the pot, make sure it is big enough to cover the entire mouth of the pot to seal in the steam and that the bottom does not touch the water. Pour the chocolate into the bowl to melt it, continuously stir with a spatula until smooth. Set the bowl aside to cool for 10 minutes. Once the chocolate and bowl are cool enough to handle, transfer the chocolate to a Ziplock bag and seal it. Place the bag in the fridge for 5 minutes, or until the chocolate has thickened (this is important because you don’t want the chocolate to be too runny, which will make it more difficult to pipe).

Step 2 – Pipe the webs: Place sheets of parchment paper on a flat surface, such as a table, and cut the very tip of a corner off the bag (do not cut too much!). Hold the Ziplock bag of chocolate like you would hold a piping bag, and gently squeeze  the bag with the open tip aimed at the paper while going in a circular motion to make a quarter-sized ring of chocolate, go around the ring twice. Place 10-12 full or half sticks around the ring, with their ends on the chocolate ring to help them stay put. Then pipe a ring on top of the base of the pretzels, exactly on top of where they are stuck to your bottom ring, and again go around twice. For full sticks, pipe 3 more concentric rings (like a target), and for half sticks, pipe  2 more concentric rings. We went twice around each ring on the large webs for strength (because there’s more space between the sticks), and twice around the first and last ring on the small webs for strength. Once you get more comfortable, you can make chocolate spiders by piping an oval of chocolate with four legs on either side; and, if you’re also doing white chocolate and want to get super creative, you can use a pretzel stick like a paintbrush and make dots for eyes on the dark spiders, and vice versa on white spiders, once they have cooled to the point where they are no longer shiny.

Allow your creations to cool for a couple hours, until you can peel the parchment paper from them, and enjoy! If you want to expedite the process, put the parchment paper on baking trays before starting and then place in the fridge for an hour to cool.

Note: all chocolates have a different consistency, and, in this case, the white was much runnier than semi-sweet chocolate even after cooling, and consequently was harder to work with.

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