Chocolate Tarantulas

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Halloween is the perfect excuse to play with your food, and these Chocolate Tarantulas are an ideal choice! Easy enough for the kids to help make and a tasty sweet-salty mix. They are significant in size, just like a real tarantula, and the chocolate legs make the spiders look hairy (EEEK!!). My son loved making these. So, if you’ve got kids around, be sure to spend time this very unique Halloween creating some creepy Chocolate Tarantulas! 

Made with Milk Duds, pretzels, and chocolate! Chocolate Tarantulas are a fun, creepy, and AWESOME Halloween food craft for the kids!

LIFE SIZED chocolate tarantulas are a perfectly festive Halloween treat! Even the kids can help with this one, and they’re always a hit! Some think they are spooky, some think they are creepy, and some think they are just plain fun. But, everyone agrees that they are awesome!

Halloween is the perfect excuse to play with your food, and these Chocolate Tarantulas are an ideal choice! Easy enough for the kids to help make and a tasty sweet-salty mix. They are significant in size, just like a real tarantula, and the chocolate legs make the spiders look hairy (EEEK!!).

To make a chocolate tarantula, you only need 3 ingredients: pretzel sticks, Milk Duds, and melting chocolate. From there, it’s just assembly! If you can stick legos together, you can also create perfect chocolate spiders! It’s a fun way to spend an October afternoon, especially when we’re all stuck at home:)

Chocolate pretzel spiders

If you happen to know anyone who likes the combination of salty and sweet (not pointing any fingers!), you’re going to love these chocolate spiders. I prefer to use dark chocolate melting wafers, or dark chocolate Candi-Quik. You could use regular dark chocolate, but I find the wafers and Candi-Quik are the easiest to work with because they don’t burn easily and you can reheat them over and over again.

How to make a Chocolate Tarantula

Another secret I have: small Dove chocolates are EXCELLENT for melting too! Melting regular chocolate can be very tricky and it burns extremely easily, so trust me on this one: use Ghirardelli melting wafers, CandiQuik, or small Dove chocolates for fun food crafts like this. If the chocolate dries while you’re rolling the pretzels in it, simply reheat it and you’re back in business! You can find ALL of them in the baking aisle at the grocery store.

How to make Chocolate Tarantula Legs

By breaking pretzel sticks in half and rolling them in melted chocolate, you can reattach the pretzels in the shape of spider legs. SO COOL! Let them dry for a couple of minutes on wax paper and then move on to the next salty and sweet step…

Chocolate Spiders made with Milk Duds

Milk Duds are caramel chocolate candies that we all know and love. You can use the same melted chocolate to dip Milk Duds in and connect them together creating realistic-looking spider bodies. Just like the spider legs that are drying, let these dry on wax paper as well. Next is where they come together… so creepy and cool!

Made with Milk Duds, pretzels, and chocolate! Chocolate Tarantulas are a fun, creepy, and AWESOME Halloween food craft for the kids!

If you notice, rolling the pretzel sticks in the melted chocolate creates a “hairy leg” effect, which keeps form while drying. The chocolate pretzel spider legs will lift off the wax paper so easily! Dip one end of each leg into the melted chocolate and hold them against the Milk Dud body. As long as you’re using the chocolate I recommend, you can easily reheat the chocolate to allow for this step of attaching the spider legs.

Made with Milk Duds, pretzels, and chocolate! Chocolate Tarantulas are a fun, creepy, and AWESOME Halloween food craft for the kids!

Since it only takes a small amount of chocolate to attach the 8 legs to the spider body, they dry pretty quickly! Once completely dry, you can actually lift the chocolate tarantulas up and hold them! HOW CREEPY do they look? They’re like real-life tarantulas, they just happen to be incredibly tasty. If you like chocolate, caramel, and salty pretzels… this is the perfect Halloween craft for you!

Made with Milk Duds, pretzels, and chocolate! Chocolate Tarantulas are a fun, creepy, and AWESOME Halloween food craft for the kids!

More Halloween Crafts by Smart School House to Try Next:

Chocolate Tarantulas

Halloween is the perfect excuse to play with your food, and these Chocolate Tarantulas are an ideal choice! Easy enough for the kids to help make and a tasty sweet-salty mix. They are significant in size, just like a real tarantula, and the chocolate legs make the spiders look hairy (EEEK!!).
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Chocolate Tarantulas

You Will Need

  • Milk Duds (or similar round chocolate candies, like maybe Whoppers perhaps?)
  • Pretzel sticks
  • Dark Melting Chocolate – found the in the baking aisle of any grocery store. I recommend:
    • Ghirardelli melting wafers
    • CandiQuik
    • small Dove chocolates
      • All of the above are easier to melt and reheat compared to regular chocolate, which is important for crafts like these!

Other supplies needed:

  • Fork for rolling pretzels into melted chocolate
  • Plastic or microwavable container
  • Wax paper

Directions

  1. Prepare work space with wax paper
  2. Break pretzel sticks in half
  3. Melt dark chocolate candies according to the directions on the individual packages
    1. Usually in 20 second intervals – check packaging
  4. Roll pretzel stick halves in melted chocolate with a fork up the side of the container (as seen in photo)
  5. Place the pretzel halves dipped in chocolate together in even “V” shapes to create spider legs in similar shapes. They don’t have to be perfect, but the closer they can be, the better.
    1. If the chocolate covered pretzel sticks don’t attach, add a little more melted chocolate at the connecting point (the spider’s “knee”) to assure the two pieces will stay together
  6. Let the legs dry while connecting the spider bodies
  7. To create the spider bodies: dip 2 Milk Duds in chocolate and attach them on wax paper. Allow time to dry (maybe 4-5 minutes)
  8. Dip one tip of each “spider leg” into the melted chocolate and attach it to the spider body. 2 leg pieces should be attached to each Milk Dud.
    1. Hold the legs in place for 20 seconds or so as needed to maintain the form
    2. If you need to reheat the chocolate, go for it! The melting chocolates I recommend can be reheated several times.
  9. Once all 8 legs are attached, allow the spiders to dry completely, then enjoy!


Kelly Dixon

Welcome to Smart School House! I’m so glad you are here! I’m Kelly Dixon and my website is designed to inspire your creative side. I hope you visit us here often!


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