TO MAKE COOKIES USING SUGAR COOKIE MIX: Cream butter in the bowl of a stand mixer until soft. Add egg, vanilla and sugar cookie mix, and mix until well combined, scraping down bowl as needed.
TO MAKE COOKIES USING ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR ARTISAN BLEND: In a medium bowl whisk together first four dry ingredients, set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter until soft, add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and extract, mix until well combined. Add dry ingredients and mix on low until dough is completely mixed, scraping down dough as needed.
TO ROLL AND CUT THE DOUGH: Divide dough in half. Roll each piece of dough between two sheets of parchment to approximately ¼” thick. Place dough with parchment on cookie sheets and chill until firm. If you do not have a web-shaped cookie cutter, you can draw a web shape on stiff paper, cut out with scissors, lay on dough and cut around with a sharp paring knife. Cut out web shapes, re-rolling scrap dough and chilling as needed.
Preheat oven to 350° with rack in top third of the oven. Bake for 13 to 17 minutes, until the cookies are starting to turn a golden color on the edges. Cookies should be crisp so they will hold up to being decorated.
TO DECORATE THE COOKIES: In bowl of stand mixer whisk together the Vanilla Frosting Mix and Cream of Tartar. Add egg whites and mix on high until icing thickens and stiff peaks form. Add 2 TBSP water and mix again. You need a consistency that will spread, but not too much.
Fill a pastry bag with about 3/4 of a batch of white frosting. Color the rest of the frosting black and set aside.
Use a small piping tip (either a #1 or #2 size) with the white frosting to outline the web shape around the outside of the cookie and allow to dry. After piping the white outline, change the tip on the white frosting bag to a larger tip. Fill in the web shape with white, using a back and forth motion, but don’t fill with too much frosting, as the frosting will spread and you can use a toothpick to move it around and fill in any empty spaces. If bubbles form, poke with a toothpick and they will disappear.
Fill another pastry bag or frosting pen with the black frosting and put on the smallest piping tip. Starting almost in the middle, make a thin spiral around and around the cookie until you get to the white edge.
Use a toothpick to pull the web from the middle to the points of the cookie, repeating the process all the way around the cookie.
Work on three or four cookies at a time and set aside to dry while working on the rest of the cookies.
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