Chocolate Reindeer with Salted Chocolate Hooves
My daughter Emmy and I had fun this week practicing some Christmas baking. We used Donna Hay's chocolate cookie dough recipe and our 10.5cm deer with antlers cookie cutter.
The reindeer cookie cutter has quite detailed small features in the antlers and also embossed leg details. I found the key to cutting these cookies out was rolling the dough to about 4mm thick and CHILL IT. Chilling it made all the difference. Explaining to Emmy (who's 3) that we had to wait for the dough to be cold enough was the hardest part! Next time I will make the dough the night before, roll it out and chill in the fridge overnight between two sheets of baking paper.
I used a toothpick to help ease out the tricky parts of the cookies and the rest of the cookie came away easily. I also chilled in between each re-rolling of the dough and the longer it chilled the easier it was to work with.
Bake the cookies at 160 degrees celcius for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven and wait 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.
We melted some dark chocolate in the microwave and dipped the reindeer legs in, popped onto baking paper and sprinkled with sea salt flakes. Cute and delicious!
We also made mini 3D gingerbread houses with the same dough and topped them with melted chocolate and salt flakes. Salted chocolate mini houses! Yum!
Happy baking!
Lisa & Emmy x