Easy Reindeer Cookies

How to Make Reindeer Cookies

Making these reindeer cookies is easy and oh, so, fun! Use these general guidelines and helpful tips along with the detailed recipe below for sweet success:

Break Up Dough

It will be a breeze to stir in other ingredients if you break up the dough into the bowl first. Using the dough straight from the fridge, break it with your clean fingers, into pieces about a tablespoon or two large. Breaking it first means it will be a lot faster to mix in the other ingredients. Or, you can skip step 1 entirely, cutting down on prep time by staring with Pillsbury gingerbread cookie dough.

Making Easy Gingerbread Dough

Stir in the additional flour and molasses until the sugar cookie dough is evenly colored. (Now that you’ve added flour, remember not to sneak a bite, since untreated raw flour can be a source of food-borne illness). Sprinkle the dough with the spices and stir, until they are evenly mixed in.

Shape a Triangular Log

Gather the dough into a ball and roll it on the counter under your hands, into an 8-inch log. Using just a little pressure, press down on the log to flatten it on one side. Roll dough over, just past the flattened side and flatten the log again to make the second side of a triangle. Repeat one more time, to create a triangle-shaped log.

Chill it Well

You can put it in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours, or you can chill it faster in the freezer (just don’t let it freeze).

Slice ‘Em Up

When the cookie dough is properly chilled, you’ll be able to slice nice slices that hold their shape. If you try to cut them too soon, the dough is likely to squish when cutting it. Place the slices on the cookie sheets and add pretzels to two of the sides to make the antlers before baking.

Make Reindeer Faces

After baking, while the cookies are still warm, add chocolate chips for eyes and a gumdrop for the nose—that’s it. No decorating skills are needed for these decorated Christmas cookies!

How To Decorate a Reindeer Christmas Cookie

The goal of making Pillsbury reindeer cookies is to have fun and let your creativity shine! This easy recipe uses standard pretzel twists, found in the snack aisle of your grocery store, chocolate chips for the eyes, and small gumdrops for the nose.

The pretzels are added before the cookies go in the oven, so cookie dough can bake around them, holding the pretzels in place. Press enough so the pretzels stick lightly in the dough. For the eyes and nose, wait a minute after the cookies come out of the oven (while still on the cookie sheets) and press on the decorations. While still warm, you'll add chocolate chips for the eyes and then a gumdrop for each nose. Press them in enough to make a slight indentation—the warm cookie will soften the bottoms of the candies so that they melt, ever so slightly, into the cookies to “glue” them. This way nothing else is needed to make them stick. Let your reindeer sit on the cookie sheets for about 3 minutes before removing them to a cooling rack. This gives the tender cookies enough time to cool somewhat making them sturdy enough to hold their shape when you moved.

If you want to get even more creative, feel free to decorate them any way you like! Get to the eating even faster by making our Frosted Reindeer Cookies or cute chocolate-frosted cookies, instead. Or use whatever small candies or sprinkles you like to decorate your cookies, using your favorite frosting to “glue” them onto completely cooled cookies.