One of my very favorite Christmas traditions is making holiday cookies. When I was little, both of my grandmothers made the best Christmas cookies and I always looked forward to eating them! I think that I inherited their cookie-making gene. After I got out of college, one of my friends began a holiday cookie exchange and I began sharing my grandmother’s cookies at the exchange.

One of the cookies that is always the biggest hit at our annual exchange is a vanilla almond bark/Ritz cracker/peanut butter cookie . Now, this may sound like the most random combo, but it is SO GOOD. A modern touch that I added to this cookie is to sprinkle sea salt on top – the combination of sweet and salty is just perfect. To me, this cookie tastes like Christmas.

Since we’re not able to do our annual cookie exchange this year (#covidproblems), I made a big batch for my friends and family and will give them as gifts this year. I wanted to write this blog post so anyone can make and enjoy these cookies this COVID Christmas. These cookies freeze really well and are low maintenance to make (a.k.a. very little clean-up)! I hope you enjoy my favorite Christmas cookie – Ritz Crackers with White Chocolate and Peanut Butter (I’m thinking of renaming them Snowball Cookies to shorten their name)!

Recipe: Ritz Crackers with White Chocolate and Peanut Butter/Snowball Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 box of Ritz Crackers – 13.7 oz. (120 crackers)
• 2 pounds of Vanilla Almond Bark (2 packages)
• Peanut Butter
• Sea Salt

Directions:

• Boil water in the bottom of a double boiler, then melt the almond bark on top (I melt 1 package of almond bark at a time).
• Lay parchment paper on cookie sheets to lay cookies on after they’ve been dipped
• Start creating Ritz cracker/peanut butter sandwiches – that is, spread about 1.5 teaspoons of peanut butter (more or less to suit your taste) on top of a Ritz cracker and place another Ritz cracker on top of the peanut butter
• Once the almond bark is melted, with tongs dip the prepared Ritz cracker/peanut butter sandwich into the almond bark. Mix it around in the white chocolate until it’s completely coated.
• Take the cookie out of the white chocolate with the tongs and place it on a prepared parchment paper cookie sheet.
• Repeat the above process until you’ve filled a cookie sheet. Then, sprinkle sea salt on top of all the cookies you’ve just coated with white chocolate. Make sure you’ve sprinkled the sea salt on top of the cookies before the white chocolate has set.
• About halfway through, add your second package of almond bark. Before you do this, double-check the water in your double boiler – you may need to add more.
• Continue dipping the cookies until the white chocolate is gone*.
• Let the cookies sit out on your prepared cookie sheets until the chocolate has set and then put them in storage containers or freeze!

*If you put a really thick coat of white chocolate on your cookies, then you may need a little more than two packages of almond bark. After several years of making these cookies, I can get 60 cookies out of two packages of almond bark and one box of Ritz crackers.

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