Gingerbread Reindeer Biscuits

These Gingerbread Reindeer Biscuits with pretzels for antlers are very cute and a great Christmas treat to make with your kids. My daughter and I had great fun with these cute reindeer cookies and we might even leave one out for Santa! The other great thing about them is that you don't need a special reindeer cookie cutter

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The basic biscuit is gingerbread as lots of people love gingerbread at Christmas. It's easy to make and great for the kids to have fun with. As well as reindeer, you could make lots of different Christmas shapes.

I've deliberately tried to keep these simple. You don't need a fancy reindeer cookie cutter. I just cut circles out of the gingerbread dough. I love the idea of pretzels for the antlers. We used chocolate covered pretzels as honestly, that was all we could find. Ordinary pretzels are of course just fine.

Decorating your Reindeer Biscuits

To decorate your reindeer treats, you just need a few extra sweet items. I would always encourage you to improvise if you don't have something as I think that can be part of the experience of baking with kids. These gingerbread cookies are just a bit of fun so don't need to look perfect.

For the reindeer eyes, we used candy eyes that you can buy in most supermarkets or cake shops. If you don't have candy eyes, use a little of the white icing sugar and dot some milk chocolate drops in the middle, or even a raisin. For the nose, we had some red icing we bought pre-packed. You could also use coloured M&M's or smarties and these are great for adding different colours.

To attach everything to your gingerbread reindeer, mix up some white icing sugar with a little water and use it like a glue. The icing will go hard and your reindeers facial features will stay in place. Place half the pretzel on the reindeer and half sticking up to look like antlers (yes really).

How to make the Gingerbread Dough

This gingerbread dough is soft and chewy and can be made in a food processor. If you don't have a food processor, you can of course make it by hand in a mixing bowl.

1. Add the plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, ground giner, cinnamon and also the butter to a food processor and mix together until you have a breadcrumb like mixture.
2. Add the brown sugar and mix together.
3. Whisk the egg together with the golden syrup, add to the mixture and mix together until you have a dough. Using brown sugar is important if you want a nice chewy gingerbread.

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4. The dough should be a little sticky. You need to chill the gingerbread dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes but preferably one hour or overnight.

Warm gingerbread is difficult to roll out. If you want to get good edges on your gingerbread, the dough needs to be chilled. When my kids were little, I would make the gingerbread dough the night before and leave it to chill overnight. This meant that when they came to 'play' with it and make shapes, it was properly cold so would stand more messing, moulding and rolling.

5. Once you've cut out your gingerbread shapes, place them on some grease proof paper on a baking tray. Remember they will expand when cooked so space them out and leave at least 3cm or 1 inch between each cookie. Cook in the middle of the oven at 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4/360F for 12–15 minutes, or until lightly golden-brown.

6. Once cooked leave the gingerbread 10 minutes to cool slightly then put them on a cooling rack. Once they are properly cold, you can start decorating them. Don't be tempted to decorate your reindeer whilst still warm as your icing sugar will just run and nothing will stick.

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Storing Gingerbread Biscuit Dough

You can keep gingerbread biscuit dough in the fridge for up to 3 days. Wrap it up well so it doesn't dry out. You can also freeze the dough for up to 3 months. Again, you need to wrap it up well to stop it getting freezer burn. You should defrost it overnight in the fridge.

For a slightly more grown up Christmas treat, try my Super Quick Mince Pies

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