Animal Crackers (about 30 small cookies)Tweet

The variety of Animal Cookies & Animal Crackers available boggles the mind: pink frosted, white frosted, with rainbow sprinkles and plain.

I love the cookies (pink frosted with sprinkles please!) so much so that I bought an animal cookie necklace recently. But even so, some days require the simplicity of an animal cracker: super crisp, barely sweet, and begging for a glass of milk.

Animal Crackers

8 ounces flour, sifted
3 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
4 ounces sugar
1/4 ounce powdered milk
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 ounce vanilla extract
1 1/2 ounces egg whites; from one or two eggs, depending on size

Extra flour for dusting
optional: decorative caramel feet

Cream together the butter through vanilla on medium speed with a hand or stand mixer. You’re not aiming for “light and fluffy,” just thoroughly combined; about two minutes. Stop to scrape the bowl down halfway through.

Turn the mixing speed down to low and add half the flour; mix until just incorporated. Next add half the egg whites. Repeat with the remaining flour and egg whites. Mix until homogenous, then turn off the mixer.

Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 3 hours before rolling. The dough can be kept in the fridge for a week.

Preheat the oven to 350° and have 2 parchment lined sheet pans standing by.

Normally, I advocate rolling cookie dough with powdered sugar, but powdered sugar adds too much sweetness to these crackers so I prefer flour.

Lightly flour the counter top and roll the cookies to a little over 1/4” thickness (3/8” if you like to be precise). Run a metal spatula between the dough and the rolling surface to ensure the dough doesn’t stick in an places. Use your favorite cutters to cut the dough transfer the cookies to the sheet pan. They won’t spread significantly in the oven, so they can be snuggled fairly close together.

If you like, dock the cookies twice, once at the “hip” and again at the “shoulder” of the animal. You can make the deepest mark with the tip of a clicky pen, clicked to the retracted position, or a large bamboo skewer. Some brands of animal crackers did not have these deep dock mark, they are purely ornamental so skip docking if you like. Make ‘em to suit your memory.

Gather, knead and re-roll the dough scraps up to three times, it’s very forgiving.

Bake about 12 minutes, or until quite firm to the touch and just beginning to brown around the edges. Cool thoroughly.

Store in an airtight container at room temperature for a month. These cookies last forever and I think they really hit their stride after a week. Or maybe I’ve just become too addicted to stale, vending machine animal crackers…

If you’d like to make your cookies do a trick, whip up a batch of decorative caramel to stand them up. Click through for instructions on how to give your cookies feet. That step will give each cookie two extra-crispy bites with a bitter caramel edge.

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Any questions?