The Cookie Tree

My Finished Cookie Tree

When I was a little girl I won a cookie tree in a raffle at a local pizza parlor.  I will never forget the experience.  In my mind it was huge, but in actuality it probably wasn't all that big.   Ever since I have always wanted to make my own cookie tree.

The Cookie Tree on the Wilton Website

Last year I found a cookie tree kit and ordered it, but it was backordered and wasn't going to come in time to make a Christmas Cookie Tree, so I cancelled the order.   This year I thought about it in October and got myself the kit.  Christmas Cookie Tree Kit - Wilton

The kit includes 10 star shaped cookie cutters in graduated sizes.  It also has a disposable bag and tips, though I used my own.

First I made sugar cookies using my favorite recipe:













Basic Sugar Cookies


Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

To Make the Dough:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until its light and fluffy.  
3. Beat in the egg and the vanilla and almond extract.  (For my tree, at this point I added 3 drops of liquid green food coloring.)
4. In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.   Add it to the butter/sugar mixture 1/2 cup at at a time, mixing well after each addition.  
5. Divide the dough into two balls.  If your not going to use the mixture right away refrigerate it, but take it out of the fridge about 1/2 hour before your going to use it.

If your using this dough for regular sugar cookies bake them 8-11 minutes.

The cookie layers baked.

To Make the Tree:   (You need about a batch and a half to make a full tree.  Double the recipe and use the leftovers for other sugar cookies.)

1. On a floured surface roll the dough into pieces that are about 1/8 in thick.  
2. Use the star shaped cookie cutters from the tree kit to make 2 of each size cookie.
3. Bake like size star layers together, never mix more then two sizes of cookie stars on a tray.   The 2 largest stars will probably take up their own cookie sheet.  It is hard to time out the largest and smallest cookies.  The largest will probably bake about 11-14 minutes, watch them until they start to brown on the edges.   The smallest will probably take about 5-8 minutes.

Note: When I made the cookies one broke and with a full batch I was missing two layers, so its a bit shorter then a full tree would be.

To Assemble the Tree:

There are so many different ways you can decorate and assemble the cookie tree.  But here is what I did.  

What you need:  Royal Icing tinted green (I used the Wilton Icing Color Gel in Kelly Green), a decorating bag, a coupler and a leaf tip (I used 67 but anywhere between 65-70 would work fine), a small (personal sized) bag of regular M&Ms and peanut M&Ms in original colors.

Note: If you never tinted royal icing with gel colors before use a toothpick, dip it in the gel and then into the icing.  Never re-dip, use a fresh toothpick everytime you add more color.

1. Using the leaf tip decorate the edge of each star layer.  Let them set. 
2. Putting a dollop of frosting in the center of each star, attach the layers one by one, stacking them.
3. Using the leaf tip again decorate the part of each star corner still showing.  What you want to do it overlap each row of icing, so the leaves overlap each other and start to go up the side of the cake.  As you finish each corner add a peanut or regular M&M.  
4. At the top add more layers of frosting going up so that it looks like the cake forms a tip.   You can use a yellow peanut M&M for the star at the top if you don't have a foil wrapped star candy.  

The White Christmas Cookie Tree
from the Wilton Website

There are lots of other ways you can decorate a tree.  Wilton has a ton of beautiful ideas, like an all white tree, a rice crispy cereal tree, a jello tree... the possibilities are endless.

White Christmas Cookie Tree
Crispy Cereal Star Tree




Sources: www.wilton.com 

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