Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies {Recipe} (2024)

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Recently my mom was in town and whenever she comes down she wants to make cookies with the girls along with a whole host of other crafts and play ideas. Last year, when we were visiting her, we found an old copy of Taste of Home magazine with a really cute recipe for Peanut Butter Mouse Cookies. Well, this year, she found a similar recipe, but instead of making mice out of the cookies, we made reindeer. These little guys were so much fun and the girls thought they were so cute! To make things even better, instead of having only one little helper like last year, this year we had two. With little B turning 2 next week, she was more than eager to help us out.

Not only were the cookies delicious but the girls had a blast hanging out with their Gee Gee and doing something fun. If you have kiddos who love to help out in the kitchen, then this recipe would be great for you to do.

Can't Get Started Without:

~3/4 cup peanut butter

~1 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

~1/2 cup shortening

~3 tablespoons milk

~1 tablespoon vanilla

~1 egg

~1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

~3/4 teaspoon baking soda

~3/4 teaspoon salt

~Chocolate-covered mini pretzels

~Mini brown M&Ms

~Mini red M&Ms

In a large mixing bowl, combinebrown sugar, peanut butter, shortening, milk, and vanilla. Beat all of the ingredients together at medium speed. When I made my peanut butter mouse cookies, the recipe didn't call for shortening and my finished mice had a definitive cracked appearance. I think the shortening was the key ingredient to moisten the dough enough to prevent cracking. Add your egg and beat until it is just blended in.

In another bowl, add your flour, baking soda and salt.

Slowly add your dry mixture to your creamed mixture with your mixer at low speed.

Once blended, form your dough into 1" balls and then pinch the end of the ball to create a reindeer shaped face. Flatten your pinched ball just a little bit with the palm of your hand. On a greased cookie sheet, place your dough balls about 2" apart and bake them in the oven for 7-8 minutes.

While your cookies are baking is a great time to sort through your M&M's. This was a great activity for the girls to practice their sorting and counting. Miss J, practiced her counting by making sure we had enough red and brown M&M's and Little B practiced her colours by separating the browns and reds from the rest. :)

I realized at this point that we could have made our lives a little easier. Instead of adding the M&M's after the cookies were cooked, if you bake the cookies with the M&M's already placed, you can avoid a lot of burnt fingers and panic to get the M&M's placed before the cookies harden too much. (This is what I did with my peanut butter mouse cookies and it worked MUCH better) But, I realized that a bit too late, so once the cookies were done, we pulled them out of the oven and immediately placed our M&M's and mini chocolate covered pretzels.

Next transfer your cookies to a wire rack and let them cool.