These Spider Web Eggs Are Freaky, and You Just Might Need Them

As Halloween approaches with frantic, last-minute wig purchases, and candy binges, you may find yourself overextended and undernourished. You need some real food, but the spooky times don’t have to stop. Get some of your creepy energy back with these unnerving spiderweb eggs.

I first noticed this trick on the Martha Stewart website. For a woman who made an empire out of being prim-and-proper, the lady sure knows how to make freaky Halloween stuff. This spidering technique looks convincing, and you don’t need any artistic skills to make this wholesome Halloween egg. You just have to know how to properly slap something with a wooden spoon.

How to make spiderweb eggs

1. Boil some eggs

Hard boil, or steam, as many eggs as you’d like to web-ify. I did four, but you can certainly increase that number, especially if you want to do multiple colors.

2. Whack ‘em with a spoon

Once the eggs are cooked, and cool enough to handle, dry them off with a towel. Line them up on the same towel, or a fresh paper towel, and grab a spoon. Stabilize the egg with your non-dominant hand, holding it on the side so you don’t hit your fingers. With your other hand, use the back of the spoon to whack the egg in one spot.

It might take a few tries to get a handle on exactly how much force you should use, but start with a medium amount, and adjust as needed. The resulting crack should radiate out in a web pattern. Hit the same spot gently a few times if you want the cracks to be more defined. The dye needs to be able to seep through.

3. Dye them

The Martha Stewart site recommends using blueberries to make a dark gray dye, but you can use any food coloring, just like you would dye Easter eggs. Fill a measuring cup with just boiled water. Add 10-20 drops of food coloring to make a highly-saturated dye (I did red), and add 2 teaspoons of vinegar.

To make a blueberry dye, cook 1 cup of fresh blueberries in a small pot with 2 tablespoons of water, until the berries burst. While those are cooking, bring a cup of water to a boil. Dump the berries and juice into a measuring cup and add the cup of just-boiled water. There’s no need to add acid, as the berries are already acidic, and stain plenty well on their own.

Let the eggs sit, submerged in the dye, for 20 to 25 minutes. With both the red artificial dye and the natural blueberry dye, I noticed the pigment stained after 10 minutes, but the lines looked better, and much darker, after about 20 minutes.

4. Peel the eggs carefully

Peel the eggs, but do your best to keep the membrane intact. In my tests, the web pattern looked perfect on the edible membrane between the shell and the egg white. If you peel that off you’ll still see the pattern, but it’s rather blurry and, frankly, not as cute.

Enjoy these eerie spider web eggs with air fryer “mummy fingers” for a well-rounded breakfast that’s fit for a prince of darkness. Trust me, after a night of cauldron cocktails, you’ll be grateful you did.