October 22: Ritzy Spiders

 

Snack time!

This one is easy. I saw the picture of it on Pinterest the other day and decided I would try it without consulting someone else's directions because, let's face it, does it *really* require in-depth directions?

But don't worry. I'll still provide them. Haha.

The good thing about this is that you can customize these according to your own dietary preferences and/or what you've got in your kitchen stock. In the "recipe," I'll list in bold print what I used, but I'll also provide alternatives in italics.

Ritzy Spiders

Ingredients:
 As listed, makes 1 sandwich

* 2 Ritz crackers (or your favorite round cracker or breadstuff) -
* 4 thin pretzel sticks, cut in half or left whole (it's a preference thing)
* 2 teaspoons peanut butter (or spreadable cheese, or cream cheese, or hummus, or Nutella, or another nut butter of your choosing)
* 2 dollops of squeezable cookie icing (or melted chocolate/candy melt, or additional peanut butter, or cream cheese)
* 2 mini M&Ms (or raisins, or halved dried cranberries, or peanuts, or candy sprinkles, or mini chocolate chips, or candy eyeballs) 

 Directions:

1. Spread a thick layer of peanut butter on one side of your cracker. (It needs to be thick so that the legs remain in place.)

Use a thick layer. Mine could probably be thicker.

2. Arrange the pretzel sticks across the cracker to serve as "legs," pushing them into the peanut butter so that the PB serves as glue. If you leave the sticks whole, they will jut out straight. If you cut them in half (use a sharp knife or even break them by hand), they can be placed in a more fanned-out manner. I tried it both ways. It's up to you how much time you want to spend arranging these and also how you prefer them to look.

2 different "leg" options. Top: leaving the pretzel sticks whole. Bottom: breaking sticks in half

3. Place another cracker on top of the the bottom cracker with legs, adding as much peanut butter as you need for it to stay together as a sandwich.

4. Squeeze two small dollops of cookie icing on your top cracker (this will hold the eyes --in step 5-- in place. Technically, if you like the look of the dollops, they could also probably just BE the eyes. But I used the icing as glue.) **If you look at the Step 2 photo above, I first tried piping on jelly at this stage (because, you know, peanut butter and jelly!) but I didn't like the look of it and it was messy getting on there. That's the top spider. On the bottom spider, I tried using more peanut butter. But I wasn't a huge fan of that either. That's when I switched to the icing and it worked the best for me.**

5. Place the M&Ms on top of the icing as eyes. **Again, if you look at the Step 2 photo, you can see I started off using dried cranberries which I'd cut in half or in quarters. I didn't like how they weren't uniform in size, so I switched to the mini M&Ms and liked that a lot better.**

I served these to my girls as a mid-afternoon snack, but they might also make a fun lunch. Don't forget that if your child has nut allergies or their school/class is a nut-free zone, these are easy to customize. Some cheddar cheese spread (like Wispride) or any number of other spreads would be delish in there. Surprise your kid with these in her lunchbox. It might be the only time she's happy to find a spider in her bag.