Creepy Chocolate Chip Cookies
My obsession with The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell on Netflix continues! If you missed my last blog post, I made the Halloween Candles from Episode 2 and shared details about the show and why I love it so much. I have wanted to tackle many of the crafts and recipes Christine creates in her series, and these Creepy Chocolate Chip Cookies seemed like something I might not epically fail in! They took a lot of time and patience, but I am so pleased with how they turned out! What do you think?
the eyes have it
In the show, Christine does not share what recipe she uses to make the cookies. Her tutorial only covers how to create the eyeballs and put them on the cookies. That is totally fine by me. There are tons of chocolate chip cookie recipes available online, so search around or use one of your favorites! I used the Chewy Browned-Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe from the Half Baked Harvest Super Simple cookbook by Tieghan Gerard. They are SOO GOOD and have a sprinkle of flaky salt that makes them even better!
Link to Cookbook: amzn.to/3G57ICc
Disclosure: Some of the links posted are amazon affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
ingredients + tools
To make the eyeballs and eyelids, watch Episode 2 - the segment for these starts at 20:19. Most of what I list below is in the episode, but I share a lot of extra notes that I think will be helpful for you to know in advance.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Recipe of your choice, see my recommendation in the section above.
White Modeling Chocolate
Royal Icing Ingredients
Powdered Sugar + Egg Whites + Vanilla Extract are usually the main ingredients for royal icing. Look for a recipe to get precise measurements.
Parchment Paper
You will need this to make a small piping bag for the royal icing. You could also use a smaller plastic piping bag or even a sandwich bag if you have them! Sandwich bags don’t do well under pressure, so be gentle and don’t squeeze too hard, or your bag will explode.
Sculpting Tools…if you have them
Christine uses a sculpting tool with a ball-tipped end to create the cavity for the eyeball. I would not make an effort to buy actual sculpting tools if you don’t already have them.
I used the small end of my melon-baller and pressed the rounded end into the center of my cookies right after I took them out of the oven. It worked perfectly. You can honestly use any small round item, like a marble or even a large blueberry. If the cookie is still warm, it will be super easy to press your tool of choice into it.
Small Paint Brushes
I found a three-pack of small paintbrushes at the Dollar Store, and they worked perfectly for smoothing out the icing and painting the eyeballs!
Clear Piping Gel
You can find this at Michael’s and Amazon.
Edible Food Colors
Christine says that she used powdered edible paints, but I couldn’t find any in-store - just online.
I have a small set of gel food coloring that came in super handy for this! If you’ve never used gel food coloring, dip a toothpick into the color and then into your icing mixture. Use caution with the dark colors and slowly build your color with just a small amount at a time.
Vodka
Vodka isn’t something that Christine uses on the project, but I found it handy to dilute some of the food colorings and use them to paint the eyeball colors. I added a small amount of color to a tiny bowl and added a small drop of vodka to half of it - easy peasy. Vodka dries out better and faster than water, making it ideal for this job.
Small Bowl of Water
This is just to dip your brush into so you can blend the royal icing into the cookie.
To paint the irises, I dipped one of my paintbrushes into the vodka + food coloring mixture and slowly started to build up color until it was the size and shade I wanted. Using a pointed paintbrush, I drew on the pupils with undiluted black.
The entire process takes a lot of patience and time. It took several layers of icing to get the eyelids smooth, and I used a clean paintbrush with a little water to smooth it all out, just as Christine does on the show. I thought I would add eyeballs to my entire batch of cookies, but after a few hours, I decided six was perfectly acceptable.
eye carumba
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Experience is the best teacher. Here are some of my big mistakes and pro tips!
Mistake #1 - The Royal Icing: I used powdered sugar and a little heavy cream for my icing. I made these late at night and somehow forgot the components for royal icing, resulting in icing glaze and not royal icing. It mostly worked out in the end, but actual royal icing would have been easier. My error did not dawn on me until the following day, but I was not entirely bothered by it since the cookies still looked great!
In the photo above, the top cookie was re-made the next day with actual royal icing for the eyelids, and you can see it gives more definition and structure.
Mistake #2 - No Clear Piping Gel: Sigh, I completely forgot to add clear piping gel to my eyeballs because I also completely forgot to purchase it! It wasn’t until I started writing this blog post and re-watched the episode for the 10th time that I realized I ignored it.
There is no piping gel on any of the three cookies in the photo above, but using it would have probably saved me from the heartache of Mistake #3.
Mistake #3 - Condensation: You probably won’t do this, but I made the mistake of putting my cookies in the freezer to help the icing set. It was fine until I took the cookies out and the eyeball started to get a wee bit of condensation as they were cooling down. My eyeballs, which I painstakingly hand-painted, started to “melt” from the moisture and it ruined all my hard work! My eyeballs were DETAILED before they defrosted and looked like the top cookie instead of the cookie on the right! The colors didn’t run to the point of an epic disaster, but I was so sad to see my hard work go to waste from a stupid mistake. I could play it off and say I was going for a “watercolor” effect…but alas, that was NOT my intention.
Now for things that went well and I would recommend you try as well!
Pro Tip #1: Follow Christine’s lead and use extra chocolate chips to place around each dough ball before baking. It only takes a few extra minutes, but it is worth it! I tried rolling the cookie dough in the chocolate chips, but it looked terrible. Hand-placing them is the way to go for a photogenic cookie!
Pro Tip #2: I gave my eyeballs a little extra pizzazz by adding a teeny-tiny little ball of white modeling chocolate around the rim of the pupils to give them a reflective effect. Personally, I think it made them look more realistic and was absolutely worth the effort!
Pro Tip #3: In the show, Christine colors some royal icing with brown and black for her irises and pupils. In the photo above, the cookie on the left uses that technique. You end up with a solid color and a slightly elevated iris, which works well! I chose to paint my irises because I wanted them to be less opaque and I wanted to build on the color for realism. It is way more work than is required, but I love how it turned out (before the condensation disaster), and I think I would do it again if I had to!
eye love them!
So…what do you think?! Are you uncomfortable with these candy eyes looking at you like you’re the eye candy? Does anyone else get Steve Buscemi vibes from that last picture? Even if you don’t go through the full effort to create these on your own, I highly recommend trying the recipe for the cookies and getting the Half Baked Harvest cookbook!
If you’re a fan of the show, planning to make these cookies, or have thoughts about how mine turned out…leave a comment below!