Nifty 3D Christmas Tree Cookies, Great to Eat or Give!

A fabulous way to turn sugar cookies into gorgeous Christmas Tree gifts. They look fabulous, taste great, and are fun and easy to make. They are pretty time intensive, but the result is fabulous. I wrote this up on Dabbled as well.

These were inspired by Wedding Cake Cookies for wedding favors, which are blogged here. I credit my fabulously creative aunts for the idea!

Step 1: Materials & Hardware

Unusual Hardware:
Cookie cutters in star shapes (at least 4 sizes from 1 in or so up)
Small spatula.

Materials:
Sugar cookie dough, with no leavening (ie baking soda or powder), something like this recipe.
Icing (buttercream or similar) that will dry hard.
Green food coloring
Storebought or homemade royal icing flowers. {Cheap, but more labor intensive: make your own ahead of time (google for instructions). More expensive but easier: purchase online or from a local cake supply company} - or - use your imagination to decorate!
Optional: Peanut Butter Cups, miniature.
Optional: acetate favor boxes for packaging.

Step 2: Cookies

Prepare cookie dough according to recipe. Roll thin (1/4 in or less).
Amount will depend on the number of Cookies you wish to make.

You'll need four star shaped cookie cutters - from 1 in or so, up.

Determine the number of cookies, and you'll need enough to have 8 stars per cookie, 2 of each size. Make a few extra in case of breakage or cookie-stealing family :)

Cut out cookies, and bake according to recipe.

Step 3: Ice and Stack

Prepare your icing. (These were made with buttercream, but any type that dries hard should be fine.) Use green food coloring to tint your icing green.

Ice the largest cookie first, then ice the second of the same size. Immediately press the iced cookie on top of the first one, centering the points of the stars between the ones of the previous layer, so they do not overlap. Continue building the tree in this manner, with successively smaller stars. Icing the star shapes is hard to do neatly, but just make sure the points look nice, as that is what will show.

See the attached pics, some are neater than others (the messy ones are mine!) :)

Step 4: Decorate

There are plenty of options for decorating ... be creative! But we used packaged royal icing flowers, which you can purchase from a cake supply shop or online. Just google royal icing flowers. Just press one on top while the top star's icing is still wet. We had some sugar stars we considered standing up on the top of the tree as well, which could be really neat.

If you want to make your own flowers, just pipe them onto wax paper prior, let dry hard, then peel and place in the same manner.

Step 5: The "Trunk"

The original plan was to just have this be the cookie, but due to the size of the box we wanted to package them in, we thought they should be taller. So a 'trunk' was added! Simply an unwrapped Miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. And hey, now your cookie includes chocolate -- can't be a bad thing!

Anyways, the Trunk is optional, so use it if you like it!

In the second picture, you'll see we just 'glued' this to the bottom with more icing.

Step 6: Packaging for Giving!

If you're going to give these as a gift, you'll need something to put it in. For this, we used clear acetate favor boxes ordered online (check places that sell wedding favor boxes in bulk), tied with a gold ribbon. But there are lots of options, again, be creative!

Important: Let the tree dry thoroughly before transferring to packaging. Use icing to 'glue' the tree to the bottom of the box.

The first example picture shows a tree with a trunk, and also a tree sans trunk with an extra cookie.
The second is the finished version.

Give as gifts or they would make a great display for a party!

Enjoy :)