This Rudolph Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe is fun to make and delicious to eat. Use pretzels, mini chocolate chips and M&Ms to create your own Rudolph cookies!
Ask any kid who their favorite reindeer is and chances are that they will answer “Rudolph!” Well, that’s a great choice and is an especially fun one for baking.
With a bright red M&M nose, this Rudolph Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe is easy to identify as Santa’s lead reindeer.
The homemade peanut butter cookie recipe we use for these Rudolph cookies is easy to whip together.
But, if you just want to do the fun part of decorating with your kids, you could start with a refrigerated cookie dough instead.
Even little tots are able to help by placing the chocolate chip eyes and M&M noses in place to make these adorable reindeer cookies! For older kids they can help measure out ingredients and mix up the dough.
If you plan to make a lot of Rudolph Christmas cookies, it’s helpful to get a bag of ALL red M&Ms (which you can get in bulk on Amazon) or you can use a bag of holiday M&Ms and pick out the half that are red instead of green.
Want to make a gluten-free version? Start with this almond flour peanut butter cookies recipe and then continue with our decorating instructions using gluten-free pretzels.
Rudolph Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe
INGREDIENTS 1/2 cup Peanut Butter 1/2 cup Butter 1/2 cup Sugar 1/2 cup Brown Sugar 1 tsp Vanilla 1 Egg 1 1/3 cup Flour 1 tsp Baking Soda 1/2 tsp Salt 48 Red M&M’s 96 Mini Chocolate Chips Mini Twist Pretzels
Roll into 1/2-3/4″ balls and place on cookie sheet several inches apart.
Sprinkle with sugar and gently make an indentation slightly off the center of each cookie.
Bake 12-14 minutes.
Place an M&M in the indentation of each cookie.
Insert 2 mini chocolate chips (pointy side down) above the M&M to be the eyes.
Insert 2 pretzel pieces to be the antlers.
If the antlers won’t stick, place some chocolate chips in a sandwich bag and microwave 30 seconds and knead until soft. Clip the very tip of the corner and pipe onto cookie to act as glue.
For some extra fun, team up these cookies with ourwith our with our Reindeer Hot Chocolate! Packaging the two together would make a really fun Christmas gift.
For lots more fun reindeer themed fun, check out these tips for throwing the ultimate reindeer party!
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Rudolph Peanut Butter Cookies
Chrysa
This Rudolph Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe is fun to make and delicious to eat. Use pretzels, mini chocolate chips and M&Ms to create your own Rudloph cookies!
Cream together peanut butter, butter, sugar and brown sugar until smooth.
Add egg and vanilla and beat until smooth.
Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.
Slowly add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, beating until incorporated.
Roll into 1/2-3/4″ balls and place on cookie sheet several inches apart.
Sprinkle with sugar and gently make an indentation slightly off the center of each cookie.
Bake 12-14 minutes.
Place an M&M in the indentation of each cookie.
Insert 2 mini chocolate chips (pointy side down) above the M&M to be the eyes.
Insert 2 pretzel pieces to be the antlers.
If the antlers won’t stick, place some chocolate chips in a sandwich bag and microwave 30 seconds and knead until soft. Clip the very tip of the corner and pipe onto cookie to act as glue.
I am not a nutritionist. These values were calculated automatically with the Spoonacular Food API.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
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The reason is that peanut butter cookie dough is dense, and unpressed, each cookie will not cook evenly. Using a fork to press the dough is a convenience of tool; bakers can also use a cookie shovel (spatula).
So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.
If you're wanting to use natural (no sugar added) peanut butter, the cookies will be less sweet and they will likely spread out more. Using natural peanut butter will change the structure and texture of the cookies. Why are my cookies dry and crumbly? This is most likely a classic case of using too much flour.
If you don't flatten the cookies first, then the fork does double duty – it performs both functions. One very subtle result of creating the pattern is that the little tips of dough bake up crisper than the rest of the cookie, giving you both a bit of additional texture and deeper taste where the dough is more baked.
The most common mistake with peanut butter cookies is using the wrong type of peanut butter. The BEST peanut butter for today's cookies is a processed creamy peanut butter, preferably Jif or Skippy.
Should you refrigerate peanut butter cookie dough before baking? Optional! This is a really soft dough, so it's easier to handle if you chill it a bit (plus it gives the flavors a chance to deepen). But if you put them in the oven right away, it will work just fine.
For starters, chilling prevents cookies from spreading out too quickly once they're in the oven. If you use a higher fat butter (like Kerrygold), chilling your dough is absolutely essential. Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool.
If you want to nail the perfect ratio of ingredients for maximum peanut flavor but a soft cookie texture, try using no more than 1 cup of peanut butter for every 1 1/2 cups of flour and 1/4 cup of butter.
Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.
Peanut butter: Creamy peanut butter is ideal for this recipe because crunchy peanut butter creates an overly crumbly cookie. You can use processed peanut butter such as Jif or Skippy, or natural-style peanut butter.
We prefer natural peanut butter here, so you can dial in the sugar and salt amounts precisely, and smooth peanut butter over crunchy to better control the cookies' fat and moisture levels. Letting the cookie dough rest ensures the flour is fully hydrated, resulting in crisper edges and chewier middles.
Cookies will flatten if there is a bit of much fat in the dough, usually butter or shortening. Try adding more flour or oats or something else that will add to the firmness of your dough. Why did my peanut butter cookies turn out flat? Peanut cookies are not hard to make.
Unlike many other cookies, peanut butter biscuits only fully harden once they've been removed from the oven. Here's how to tell when peanut butter cookies are done: The tops of the cookies are a uniform light brown.They're soft to the touch but not moist or mushy.
My trusted method for getting ripply, jagged-topped cookies has been simple–scoop the cookie dough with two forks, or as I like to call it, forking your dough. Take two forks and rough up the dough a little bit. Use the tines of both forks to gather up as much dough as you want in a bundle.
Pricking holes in a short dough (one that's high in fat, and has a flaky or crisp texture after baking, such as shortbread or the crust of some bar cookies), helps to vent the steam created in the oven while baking. You can use a fork or a dough docker to prick small holes all over the surface of the dough.
Peanut butter cookies don't spread as they cook, so you have to flatten them before hand. This ensures that the middle will cook through before the outside burns. As for the pattern created, it actually creates slightly more surface area, so you'll get more browning at the extra edges that you create.
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