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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There are a few reasons why your cookies are falling apart. The wrong ratio of ingredients, such as too little sugar or peanut butter will make them fall apart. The wrong type of peanut butter may cause them to fall apart. Or using old eggs may create crumbly cookies.
The baking company shared that the reason has to do with the consistency of the dough. Because peanut butter cookie dough is dense, using a fork helps flatten it into the ideal shape and thickness, allowing it to bake evenly.
Why did my peanut butter cookies turn out hard? This is most likely to happen from over-baking your cookies. Make sure to take them out of the oven when they're still a bit soft in the middles, that way they can finish cooking on their cookie sheets outside the oven.
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 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.
One reason could be that you overcooked them. Another reason could be that you didn't add enough moisture to the dough. Finally, your peanut butter cookies might be dry and crumbly if you used a natural peanut butter that doesn't have any added oil.
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.
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.
One reason could be that you overcooked them. Another reason could be that you didn't add enough moisture to the dough. Finally, your peanut butter cookies might be dry and crumbly if you used a natural peanut butter that doesn't have any added oil.
Chill your cookie dough! The dough is extremely soft due to the creamy peanut butter, eggs, and butter and if it's not cold going into the oven, the cookies will spread all over your baking sheet. I chilled this cookie dough for 24 hours and my cookies were soft, thick perfection.
Your other source of fat should be butter, not shortening. Butter will make your cookies taste buttery; shortening will make them taste suspiciously vacant, like Katy Perry's voice post-autotune. Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening doesn't.
This may not sound like a lot, but it is enough that it can affect the quality of your cookies – adding too much peanut butter can make them dry, hard, and crumbly.
"When your dough is refrigerated, the butter hardens.So when you bake them, they spread less and hold their shape better," adds Epperson. "Which means a better likelihood of a soft, chewy cookie in the center."
That's why some of our cookies look the same but have two different names. Whether the package says Peanut Butter Patties® or Tagalongs®, or Samoas® or Caramel deLites®, the cookies are similarly delicious.
Why are my cookies dry and crumbly? This is most likely a classic case of using too much flour. It's crucial to properly measure the flour in this recipe, as even 1 extra tablespoon of flour can completely change the structure of the cookies. You also might have over baked them!
Why are my peanut butter cookies so crumbly? Peanut butter cookies are naturally delicate because peanut butter has so much fat in it. All the extra fat makes it a little harder for the binding ingredients (egg, butter) to hold it together.
Reasons why peanut butter cookies are dry and crumbly:
You cooked them a wee bit too long. Peanut butter cookies can be extremely deceiving. They don't always look cooked when, indeed, they are fully cooked. They won't get brown around the edges.
Introduction: My name is Greg O'Connell, I am a delightful, colorful, talented, kind, lively, modern, tender person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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