Food Friday: Pitiful (Nevertheless Cute) Reindeer Cookies

Somewhere online I saw some adorable reindeer cookies.  I decided to try them for early morning food.  This is how I proceeded:

Measured 2 cups chocolate chips and 1 Tablespoon coconut oil into a glass measuring cup.  Microwaved for 30 seconds, removed from microwave to stir, returned for 30 more seconds, stirred again.  They were nicely melted.  Your microwave might take longer.  Check EVERY 30 seconds or you will burn the chocolate.

Opened a package of sandwich cookies that I had found at the Dollar Tree. Dropped the cookies one at a time into the melted chocolate then turned over and lifted out with salad tonge and laid on a parchment-paper-lined pan.  After getting a dozen or so of them coated with chocolate I laid two small pretzel knots on top of the individual cookies, covered with a piece of parchment paper and a large storage container to weight down the paper.  It was my view that doing this would keep the "horns" happily in place on the cookies while the chocolate cooled.

Because it was below freezing outside, I put the pan on a table on the front porch for a few minutes. In the meantime I went through a container of M and M's, both plain and peanut, to find whites for the eyes and reds for the Rudolph noses.

By that time the cookies on the porch were solid!  Bringing them inside, I flipped them over so the "horns" were on the bottom.  I poured more melted chocolate on top of the top/face of the cookies then placed the eyes and nose.  It would have been good to use some sort of grabber or tongs for this job.  OH!  As I am thinking of this now, I should have found the sugar tongs my brother brought home from France where he served as a missionary decades ago.  They would have been perfect for this job.

Well, as you can see, precision is NOT my middle name.  However, I do think they look rather cute.  If you make them, they will be wonderful.

Even with the pitiful appearance, they are edible.  In fact, so edible that I removed leftovers to drop off with the local grandchildren so I would not inadvertently eat one.  Or two.  Or more.  (Have you ever noticed that if you have a treat in your house that is highly visible it is almost impossible to walk by without reaching out to it?  It is better to have a bowl of lovely kale salad sitting on the counter with a clear top on it.)

Perhaps the next reindeer food item will be more attractive.  There IS another one in the wings....