Halloween Chocolate Spiders...yummmm

This is a great "food craft" for halloween parties, school functions, or just a festive desert for your family.  My inspiration of these chocolate caramel spiders were chocolate Turtles you can get at Fannie Mae.  They are pretty easy to make, I made about 25 and it took me a little less than an hour, start to finish.

Ingredients
 *Bag of Milk Chocolate chips
 *Bag of small pretzel sticks
 *Wrapped caramel squares
 *candy decoration or sprinkles(I used Candy Corn)
 *Cooking oil
 *milk

1. My caramel squares were hard from being out in the cold, so I turned on the oven and put then on the stovetop to make the carmels softer so I can roll and flatten them.  The microwave would probably work as well.

2. Put GREASED wax paper onto baking sheets so the spiders won't stick.  I used cooking spray.

3. Unwrap caramel and roll them into balls and flatten them out a little to make the spider body.  Put on greased wax paper.

4.  Carefully push 8 pretzels into the caramel for the spiders legs.  The softer the caramel is, the easier the pretzels will go into it.  I broke a few, so it takes a little practice.  I made some spiders with long legs and short legs, to make them shorter, just break the pretzel stick in half, so you are actually using 4 sticks instead of 8.

5.  Create a double boiler to melt the chocolate chips.  I boiled about an inch of water in a sauce pan and set a glass bowl on top of boiling water, making sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl.  On medium heat slowly melt the chocolate, using a spatula to scrape the outside.  The chocolate was too thick for me so I added some milk to thin it out a little.  Also I added a little cooking oil to make the chocolate nice and shiny (tip courtesy of the lovely Paula Dean).

6.  Using a spoon I covered the caramel bodies with the chocolate, spreading it around making sure it covered all the sides.

7. While the chocolate is still wet add your decorations.  Sprinkles and candy would be great.  Use your imagination.  I had candy corn in the kitchen so I put two on the front of the spiders to look like candy fangs.  They turned out great!!!