More Reindeer Fun

Gavin and I had some more fun this week working on a little Christmas activity.  I found another really cute project at The Idea Room for making Reindeer Pop Treats and figured it would be an easy task for us since the ingredients were pretty basic.  Haha- boy, was I wrong.  We did prevail and created these delicious treats that turned out cute and Gavin got to deliver them to his friends along with the Magic Reindeer Food we made!  If you want to make these pop treats you can simply click on the link above and get step by step specific instructions, however, if you wanted to know how we made them "Saudi" style-- keep reading.   I also wanted to point out before I go any furthur that this project was intended to be something for Gavin to get to do and make with a little assistance from me.  However, two days later, and only 8 cookies were made, it ended up being a project Brooks and I had to finish before going to a Christmas party.  Gavin did enjoy eating all the peanut butter I put in his bowl and then would crush the cookies up into the bowl.  

In order to make these pop treats- you need nutter butters and popsicle sticks.  I went to 3 stores and couldn't find them, figures.  I also couldn't find any popsicle sticks in my stash of crafts and they aren't sold in any of the local stores around here so I had to improvise on both parts.  First, I purchased some kind of "sweet biscuit cookies" that somewhat resembled the shape of a nutter butter and used coffee stirrers from Starbucks that I picked up a while back to use for cake decorating.  I smeared peanut butter on 2 sides of cookies and placed them together, with the stirrer in between, then placed in the fridge for a  few minutes to let the "stick" set.  I opened a few bags of M&M's in search for red M&M's to use for the reindeer's nose and then picked up a container of mini M&M's for brown M&M's to use as the eyes-- the actual recipe calls for MINI chocolate chips, but I couldn't find MINI cc.  It also called for white chocolate ships to use as the backdrop for the eyes, however, you can't find those in any stores around here either.  Therefore, I ended up melting a little bit of white chocolate that I managed to find in a store.  

 

Of course, I needed pretzels that were "shaped" but all we had were pretzel sticks- I think that would have made our reindeer's look a little weird.  Therefore, I went out to ANOTHER store and found a bag of miniature shaped pretzels and attempted to break them where they looked somewhat like antlers.  I had plenty of chocolate bars to melt so that was the easy part.

 

Now- a lot of stuff happened between the melted chocolate above and the reindeer pops below.  I would suggest that you have all your materials out, prepped, and ready because you really have to work fast to ensure all your ingredients will stick to the chocolate before it melts.  Aren't they cute?

*We dipped the ends of the pretzels into the chocolate, then placed them onto the top part of the cookie, and used the edge of the cookie sheet to hold them up so they wouldn't fall off.  That really seemed to help!  Oh yea, I forgot to mention we used sprinkles for the cheeks.

Gavin did help a little bit, but I have to admit, the "personalities" that are coming across on our reindeer's faces are all my fault.  I was in a hurry, not paying attention like I should have, and might have placed a few ingredients in the wrong places.  oops!

                                        

 

I am happy to say that the Reindeer Pops were a big hit at the dinner party we went to and it was fun watching people's reactions to the different looks each Reindeer had.  As big of a deal as this project became for us-- it really was fun to make and they were pretty delicious!  

 

Gavin was proud of his work and enjoyed showing off his masterpieces to all of our friends!  Hope you and your family have fun making this fun, cute, treats!