It is officially the Christmas season! Well, for me anyways. I like to start early. Since our class is almost complete, I decided that I wanted the last two activities of my major learning project to be related to Christmas cookies. For this (two) week’s challenge I decided to try my hand at a 3D cookie tree.
I saw a post about this idea in my Facebook cookie group and knew I had to try it. While doing some searches, I found that Wilton sold this set of star cookie cutter to create a tree, along with piping bags, tips, and directions. Alas, I am cheap and thought I might only use it once (or maybe once a year if things went well), so I opted for this knock off version that came only with the cutters.
I baked a batch of my regular sugar cookie dough using the same vanilla recipe I have been enjoying most of the term. I started by cutting out the biggest star and went down through until the smallest. I decided to do 2 of each star (except for the biggest one) to help make the tree taller. I ended up running out of dough and had to make a second batch.
The next day, I made another batch of the Wilton royal icing (the one I used last time that turned out really well) and coloured it green. I also added a tsp of lemon extract to give it a new flavour. It was sooooo good. Out of the almond, vanilla, and lemon flavours that I have tried, I think the lemon is my favourite. Especially with the vanilla cookie. I flooded all of the stars and left them to dry overnight before attempting to assemble the tree.
I tried to film the assembling of the tree, but it did not go as planned. I ended up with 3 videos because my dog kept barking outside and I had to stop to let him in. I also did not realize until after that the 3rd video was not angled properly, so as the tree got taller you are not able to see it all. I then tried putting it into one video, but my work laptop will not let me install any editing software without permissions. I would suggest watching the part 1 and part 2 videos as they will give you a general idea of how I used the royal icing to “glue” the tree together and how I stacked the stars. The part 3 video is pretty much the same, but as I get further up the tree it gets cut off from view (sorry! This could only be one take so no redoes allowed).
I finished the tree by using a small strainer/hand sifter to dust some icing sugar over the tree to make it look like snow. I think it turned out looking great overall. We have decided that we are not going to eat this one and it is going to sit on the kitchen table as a part of our Christmas décor. I did however get a request from one of my fiancé’s coworkers to make another tree for us to bring to a little Christmas party. Here is the final result:
Next week, I am going to try and do a variety of Christmas designs. This will be similar to what I did at Halloween, except this time I will stick with the royal icing instead of the buttercream. I will for sure be doing a candy cane and a Christmas tree, but I did post a poll on twitter to see what other cookie(s) my classmates think I should do. Go ahead and vote!
Mme.Cookie 
I make cookies about every two weeks, but I only do fancy cut-out cookies during holidays. This makes me want to try some out in the next few weeks using the dough recipe you have been enjoying. ( Also, your dog is very cute!)
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I think you did a great job. I love the icing sugar that you sprinkled on for effect. How are you doing your flooding? Are you creating a thin outline first and then flooding the center? Or, doing it all at once – either way they look fantastic.
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For this one I just flooded all at once with one thickness and tried not to go too close to the edge. I figured it didn’t need to be perfect since they would be stacked up. I think next time I do smaller ones I will try to outline in a thicker icing so I can get closer to the edges.
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