Soft peanut butter cookies are decorated to look like little reindeer! These Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies are the cutest Christmas cookies ever!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year….cookie season! I really can’t get enough cookies around Christmas, so I am excited to share my cookie love today as a guest poster on Twin Stripe. Twin Stripe is my friend Katie‘s lovely blog all about food, design, parties, and the fun things in life! She is going to have some great Christmas recipes this week, so be sure to check them out.
There have been a lot of cookie recipes on Chez CateyLou lately like these gingerbread cookies and these white chocolate cranberry cookies, but I saved my favorite one to share with you today. These Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies are the cutest cookies I have ever made! Look at those little faces – aren’t they precious? And as an added bonus, they taste amazing too.
So on to the building blocks of these reindeer cookies. The key to making these cookies is to have all of your decorating ingredients lined up and ready to go: mini chocolate chips for the eyes, red M&M’s for the nose, and broken pretzel pieces for the antlers.
First you mix up a simple peanut butter cookie dough. Then you roll the dough into one inch balls and bake them. I like to use a mini ice cream scoop to measure out the dough. This way, all the reindeer will be the same size! (On Skippy, On Reese, On Planters and Jif…)
When the cookies come out of the oven, quickly (and carefully! the cookie sheet is hot!) start making the reindeer. Start with the nose – press an M&M into the middle of the cookie. This will kind of spread the cookie out a bit so that it is flat and round. Then put two mini chocolate chips on for eyes. And finally, put the pretzels in for the antlers. I only put 10 – 12 cookies on a sheet at a time so that I can decorate all the faces while the cookies are still hot. Once they start to cool and the dough hardens, you won’t be able to put the pretzels into the cookie. You can definitely fit more dough balls on the sheet, but resist the temptation!
These reindeer cookies will be the hit of any holiday party and will steal the show on a Christmas cookie platter. They are going to become a new holiday staple in my household!
Soft peanut butter cookies are decorated to look like little reindeer! These Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies are the cutest Christmas cookies ever!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 3/4 cup peanut butter
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 48 large red M&M candies
- 96 mini semisweet chocolate chips
- Pretzels, broken into 96 1-inch pieces
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, beat together butter, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls, and place at least 1 inch apart on cookie sheet. Bake only 10 - 12 cookies at a time. Refrigerate the bowl of dough in between batches.
- Bake for 7 - 9 minutes, until the cookies are just set. Immediately place one M&M in the center of each cookie for a nose (press down a bit if your cookies aren’t flat enough), 2 mini chocolate chips for the eyes, and 2 pretzel pieces at the top for antlers. Carefully transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Recipe from Ladies Home Journal
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I think these are just the cutest cookies! My girls would go crazy over them!
Can crunchy peanut butter be used?
Hi Polly – I think you could use crunchy peanut butter, the texture of the cookies would just be a little different. Let me know if you try it!
Yes! I’ve always used creamy and tried crunchy this one time…..I’ll never go back to creamy! The texture is just right and it seems the cookies want to crumble less.
My lo (almost 3 yo) LOVED doing this. Yes, they weren’t perfect but the joy on her face and the excitement in her squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealing was worth every additional mess to be had!