Slice and Bake Christmas Tree Cookies

Here’s the deal – these can be red heart Valentine’s cookies, blue snowflake cookies, etc.  All you need is a small cookie cutter and food coloring, and maybe a little imagination.

Since I had a small Christmas tree cookie cutter and I wanted the tree to stand out from the rest of the cookie, green Christmas tree cookies it is!

Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix until well blended and fluffy.  Add in the eggs and vanilla and beat again until well blended.

Next, add in the flour, baking powder and salt and mix those in until well blended and smooth.

Remove about 2/3 of the dough and set that aside.

Get your green food coloring and color the remaining 1/3 of the dough.  Put both sets of dough into the fridge to cool for about a half hour.  After the half hour, roll out the colored dough and cut out as many trees (or whatever shape you’re using) as you can and freeze on a cookie sheet for 20-30 minutes.

After your Christmas trees have hardened a bit take them out of the freezer, put some water in a small bowl and dip your finger in it.  Get one of the trees, rub one side with water and get another tree and stick it to the first (the water just makes it easier for all the pieces to stick together).  Do this for all of your snowflakes and return the dough to the freezer for another hour (or overnight).

I actually did this in a couple rounds.  The string can get long so I did multiple smaller lengths, put them back into the freezer to set, then connected those lengths once they were solid again and easier to work with.

About an hour before you’re ready to bake, take your non-colored dough out of the fridge.  You want it to be room temperature so that it’s really soft and easy to work with.

Once your plain dough is soft, take the colored dough out of the freezer and surround it with the plain dough, rolling it into a log.  Put out a sheet of wax or parchment paper, sprinkle your sanding sugar on it and roll the dough log in the sugar.

Cover your log and refrigerate the dough for at least an hour.  You can also freeze it if you want to make the cookies later, just defrost it before you bake.

When you’re ready to bake, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and slice your dough into pieces about ¼ to ½ inch thick.

Bake at 350 for about 8 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown around the edges.  Take them out of the oven and let them cool on the cookie sheet for a couple minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes about 30 delicious and really cool-looking holiday cookies!