Reindeer Cookies at Camp
Peanut butter sandwich cookies, melted chocolate, and pretzels assembled on a picnic table in December.
- calories
- 290
- weight
- 2.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 132
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 5 min
- total time
- 35 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- Snack
- Canister stove
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Peanut butter sandwich cookies | 12 | the oval kind, already shaped like a head |
|---|---|---|
| Milk chocolate chips or candy melts | 10 oz | |
| Shortening | 1 tbsp | thins the chocolate so it coats instead of clumps |
| Mini pretzels | 12 | antlers |
| Pretzel sticks | 24 | legs |
| Red candy-coated chocolates | 12 | noses |
| Candy eyes | 24 | |
| Parchment paper | 1 sheet |
Method
- Lay the parchment on a flat surface out of the wind. Set the cookies, pretzels, and candy in separate piles so you are not digging through bags with chocolate on your hands.
- Melt the chocolate and shortening together in a dry pot over the lowest flame you can hold. Pull it off the heat the moment it goes glossy. Over a fire, use coals, not flame.
- Dip a cookie face-down in the chocolate, let the extra run off, and set it on the parchment.
- Dip the flat bottom of a mini pretzel and press it against the top edge of the cookie for antlers. Prop it up with an undipped cookie or it will slide flat.
- Dip one end of two pretzel sticks and lay them against the body. Wet chocolate touching wet chocolate is enough; it will look wrong until it sets.
- Dab chocolate on a red candy for the nose and set two candy eyes above it.
- Leave them twenty minutes to harden. In cold weather it is closer to ten.
This is decoration work, not cooking. The only heat involved is melting chocolate, and that is where it goes wrong at camp: a stove under a thin pot will scorch chocolate in under a minute. Keep the flame at its lowest, pull the pot early, and let the residual heat finish the job. The spoonful of shortening thins the melt so it coats in one dip rather than sitting on the cookie in a lump.
Everything here is already shelf-stable, which is why it travels at all. The assembly-line order matters more than technique. Dip, place, prop the antlers, then noses and eyes last. Set chocolate holds the whole thing together, so anything that looks unstable while wet is probably fine in twenty minutes. This is a car-camping dessert; the cookies are too fragile to survive a pack.
Packing
Cookies in a rigid container or they arrive as crumbs. Chocolate, shortening, and candy in separate bags. Bring the parchment; a picnic table is not a work surface you want to dip on.
Variations
- Skip the pretzel legs. They break most often and add nothing but a shape.
- White chocolate takes color better if you want the antlers to read from across the table.
https://domesticsuperhero.com/holiday-reindeer-cookies