Christmas Tree of Cookies
This Christmas tree of cookies is what your holidays have been missing. So stunning to behold. So surprisingly simple to assemble. Sugar cookies and royal icing. Done.
Ingredients
- Your favorite roll-out cookie or shortbread dough in any flavor, whether chocolate, sugar, gingerbread, or some other snazzy incarnation--enough to make at least 36 cookies
- 1/2 batch Basic Royal Icing
- Optional embellishments, such as Confectioners' sugar, glitter sugar, shiny baubles and snowflakes
- Toothpicks or slender wooden skewers, for when your outlining gets a little sloppy and needs to be erased
- Cookie Cutters: Up to 6 different-sized 5-pointed stars
- Pastry bag or a resealable plastic bag with the tip cut off, for piping icing
Instructions
- Roll out your cookie dough on a lightly floured work surface to the thickness specified in the recipe. Cut about 5 or 6 cookies in each star size—maybe a few more to allow for breakages and decorating goofs. Bake as directed. Let cool.
- Outline each star with white piping icing. If desired, dust the cookies with silver glitter sugar and add a silver bauble to each star point using white piping icing as glue. Let dry.
- Take a pretty plate and, starting with the largest stars, stack them on top of each other using white piping icing to “glue” each layer together and giving each additional star a quarter turn to make the helix shape. Let dry completely about halfway through so you have a stable platform on which to stack the smaller stars. It's a good idea to make this tree close to where you're going to eat it.
Notes
- Embellish--Sift confectioners’ sugar over the entire tree to make it look like a frosted fir. Or squeeze trails of multicolored royal icing (piping icing) all over the tree. Add glitter sugar and tiny shiny baubles, snowflakes, or any other exciting Christmas decorations to the trails before they set.
- Cookie sizes--Bake cookies of similar sizes together as larger cookies will have a longer cooking time than smaller ones.
Nutrition
Serving: 1cookie | Calories: 66kcal | Carbohydrates: 9g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 3g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 2mg | Sodium: 53mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 5g