Easy Frugal Cookie Treats to Make for the Holidays

If you are looking for some simple holiday treats, both of these are fun to make! There are only a few ingredients in these Frugal Cookie Treats and you don’t even have to heat up your stove and use electricity.

Frugal Cookie Treats

While these treats aren’t totally homemade since they use store-bought crackers, they are fun to make and can be made in larger quantities so they are perfect to make for school treats or to give as gifts in little treat bags. If you do want to make them totally homemade, you could use these Homemade Vanilla Wafers in place of the crackers (use less sugar to make them more like a Ritz cracker).

To make each of these treats gluten-free, we use these Glutino Crackers. They are a good substitute that I can sometimes find at our local surplus grocery store.

Homemade Thin Mint Treats

What You Need:

Ritz Style Crackers or Homemade Vanilla Wafers
Chocolate Chips
Peppermint Extract
Candy Canes or another Mint Candy

Melt the chocolate chips with mint extract. I use this Mint Extract.

Dip the Ritz crackers (or vanilla wafers) in the melted chocolate, cover both sides.

Put them on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper.

Optional: Sprinkle with either crushed candy canes or another kind of mint-flavored candy.

Cool or freeze until chocolate is hardened and enjoy!

Store the frugal cookie treats in a cool dry place (they don’t need to be in the fridge) if there are any left after you make them. 🙂

Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches

What You Need:

Ritz Style Crackers or Homemade Vanilla Wafers
Peanut Butter or Sunbutter
Chocolate Chips

Make little sandwiches with the peanut butter (or sunbutter) and ritz crackers. Just place a bit of the nut or seed butter on the center of one cracker and top it with another cracker. Don’t use too much or it will squish out the sides.

Dip in melted chocolate chips. Cover both sides with chocolate. If your nut or seed butter is very creamy and you are having trouble with the chocolate and the butter mixing while you are trying to coat the cookies, freeze the little sandwiches first before you dip them in the chocolate. This will help them stay together and help the chocolate harden right away.

Place on a wax paper covered cookie sheet and let chocolate harden.

Decorate these treats with a drizzle of white chocolate or a sprinkle of powdered sugar if you’d like!

Store the frugal cookie treats in a cool dry place or enjoy right away.

Looking for more frugal cookie treats to make? Here are a bunch of my favorites!

Find even more Desserts and Treats on Little House Living.

Does anyone else have any ideas for frugal cookie treats? Post them in the comments!

These recipes for Frugal Cookie Treats were originally published on Little House Living in December 2009. This post has been updated in December 2018.