Cinnamon Animal Crackers
Make snack time fun with homemade Cinnamon Animal Crackers. They are made with whole wheat flour, cinnamon, butter, coconut oil, sugar, and honey, and your kids will love the powdered sugar icing with sprinkles!
When it comes to snacks, my kids could make a meal out of them. We definitely get stuck in our snack ruts of granola bars and crackers, and when this happens I try to shake things up with some homemade snacks. For us, this means mini muffins, granola, homemade graham crackers, and now these Cinnamon Animal Crackers.
Since I was making these animal crackers for a snack, not dessert, I kept them on the healthier side. They are mildly sweet with just a quarter cup of sugar and a couple tablespoons of honey, and I used a combination of white flour and whole wheat flour. To give the animal crackers a bit of flavor, I add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
Since I wanted these crackers to resemble animals, I found a cute set of mini cookie cutters on Amazon, and they were perfect. You could opt for different shaped mini cookie cutters, like butterflies or flowers, regular sized cookie cutters, or roll out and cut into square shaped crackers.
How to Decorate Cinnamon Animal Crackers
Cinnamon Animal Crackers can be topped a variety of ways. They can be kept plain, drizzled with icing and sprinkles, or just sprinkles. Of course, my kids loved the ones with icing and sprinkles. The icing for this recipe is a simple combination of powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla extract and I used round rainbow colored sprinkles. If you are going to skip the icing and just use sprinkles, I would use the sugar crystal sprinkles and put them on the cookies prior to baking.
I left some animal crackers plain, for the sake of keeping things simple. I must say - the unfrosted ones are no less delicious than the frosted ones! Additionally, they are much less messy than the ones with icing and sprinkles.
These homemade animal crackers were a really fun project to make with the kids, and they appreciated the different snack option at snack time!
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Cinnamon Animal Crackers
Ingredients
For the Animal Crackers:
- ¼ cup coconut oil, melted
- 5 tablespoon butter at room temperature
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoon honey
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
For the Icing:
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2-3 tablespoon milk
- sprinkles, optional
Instructions
To Make Animal Crackers:
- In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat together the coconut oil, butter, sugar, and honey until well combined.
- Add the egg and vanilla, and beat until combined.
- Add the baking powder, cinnamon, and salt, and mix to combine.
- Add the flours, beating until combined and formed into a dough.
- Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes. If you refrigerate for longer than 30 minutes, you’ll want to set it out on the counter for about 10 minutes to warm up a bit, as the dough will be a little crumbly if it gets too cold.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Roll half of the dough out onto a floured surface, about ¼” thick.
- Using cookie cutters or a pizza cutter, cut out the dough into shapes. Note: I used mini cookie cutters that resembled animals.
- Place the crackers onto prepared baking sheet. These do not spread, so you can place them quite close together, about ½” apart.
- At this point, you can put crystal sugar sprinkles on the cookies if you don’t want to put icing on them.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes. If your animal crackers are not mini, they will take closer to 10-12 minutes.
- Let cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheets and then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.
To Make Icing:
- Place the cookies on parchment/wax paper for easier clean up.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk.
- Drizzle the icing over each cookie and then decorate with sprinkles.
- Let the icing set up on the cookies.
- Alternately, you can serve these animal crackers plain without sprinkles or icing.
- Store in an airtight container, for up to a week.
- Enjoy!
