Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies

These are some holiday cookies my sister and I made for Christmas this year. They are basically peanut butter cookies (made from scratch) with chocolate icing  and a few other things which I will get to later. We got the idea from some cupcakes my sister saw on Pinterest. We modified the design a good biy to make awesome cookies and whalah! Peanut butter reindeer cookies.

This step will be much simpler if you make store-bought cookies, but we wanted ours to be from scratch. Much tastier in my opinion!
Anyway, to make them from scratch you will need:
1 cup unsalted butter (we accidentally used salted but they were still delicious)
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

First, soften the butter in the microwave (NOT melt). Go ahead and pour that in the mixing bowl. Next get the cup of peanut butter and toss that in as well. Add the sugar. Finally, break the eggs in a new bowl. Once you are sure that you don't have any shells in it you can add that to the mixing bowl. Mix on the first or second speed until it is thoroughly blended.

In a different bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and powder, and salt. Then pour bowl II into bowl I while it is on. Mix on low until it is mixed all the way. Now you have to wait for an hour. You may  spend that time cleaning up or reflecting on the delicousness of the cookies to come.

First preheat your oven to 375. Next, grab about one inch balls of dough and place it on a pizza stone. Utensils are optional, but hand washing is not. Don't put them too close either. They expand a lot. Then grab a fork and press it down two different ways, creating a criss cross pattern. This isn't necessary, but I like how it looks. Finally  put them in the oven for anywhere from 10-13 minutes. Check them often after the 10 minute mark. Once they are done allow them to cool for about four minutes. Then you can transfer them to a rack to finish cooling.

To decorate them, you need:
Chocolate Icing
Vanilla Icing
Pretzels like in the pictures
Brown and red M&Ms
Bite Sized Vanilla Waffers

Cover a cookie on one entire side with the chocolate icing. This would be made simpler if you made browner cookies, but I prefer the taste of peanut butter.

First, add one of the mini vanilla waffers to the bottom part of it. Then grab two of the pretzels and place them at the top of the cookie like in the picture. Take an M&M with a dab of icing on the back and stick it to the top of the "nose" to finish it off.

Eye put the eyes on! (sorry for the puns! haha) Next take some white icing and dab it where the eyes would be. Once you have them as round as possible, take a toothpick and carefully apply the chocolate icing pupils.

You can now repeat steps 6-8 on your other cookies. We only made about 10, but you can make them until you have several teams of reindeer. If you like this be sure to vote for it in the cookie contest!