Rudolph's Noses - Our favorite Gluten Free Christmas Cookie

Every family has its holiday traditions, and in our household it just would not be Christmastime if we didn't decorate the Christmas tree while listening to my eldest's punk rock holiday tunes, snip out paper snowflakes to tape onto the windows and pierce oranges with cloves to hopefully mummify into spicy sachets. If I also don't make a batch of Rudolph's Nose cookies and stain my hands from the red sugar they are rolled in, there will be Decemberish whining.

Originally I made this recipe, passed onto me by my friend Hope with the more elegant monniker of "Chocolate Cherry Bites", with a box of vanilla wafers, but now I use whatever kind of gluten-free shortbread or vanilla cookie is available on the grocery shelves.

HoHoHoping you will enjoy this Jagareski family tradition...

Rudolph's Nose Cookies

1 (9-12 oz.) box gluten-free vanilla cookies, smashed into crumbs
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
1-1/2 cups finely chopped walnuts
3 Tbsp. baking cocoa
3/4 cups chopped maraschino cherries (most of a 16 oz. jar)
3 Tbsp. light corn syrup
Red sugar crystals (at least one 2.25 oz. jar, but buy a second jar because depending on your level of encrustation, more sugar crystals may be required)

The easiest thing is to use a food processor to smash the vanilla cookies, and chop the nuts and cherries. Otherwise, chop and smash using your favorite alternate method and mix everything except sugar crystals into a large mixing bowl.

Mix together until you can shape the cookies into little 1/2 inch balls. If you need to add more moisture, a dab of leftover maraschino cherry juice will do.

Roll cookies in red sugar crystals. You can also do a mix of red and green sugar crystals, but red is the smartest and most fashionable color of sugar crystal to accompany a chocolate brown cookie, so you gotta go with that.

Makes about 40 Rudolph Noses, more than enough to light the way for Santa's sleigh.

These keep about 2-3 weeks in a covered tin. After that the sugar leaches out the moisture from the cookie and they become unpleasantly sticky.

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For lots of other gluten-free Christmas cookie recipes, check out these other links:

Aboutcom's List

Cookies in Motion website

Gluten-Free Mommy


And Carrie over at the Ginger Lemon girl blog promises a Gluten-Free Cookie Recipe Roundup later this month, so check out some other scrumptious options there.