Holiday Cookie Box for Christmas

Individual packages of homemade, decorated holiday cookies waiting to be boxed with a nine inch by eight inch Christmas tree cookie. 

A Recycled Cookie Cutter

Last year I received  Ferrero Rocher chocolates packaged in a plastic, Christmas tree shaped container. Thrifty gal and recycler that I am, my first thought was to reuse the empty container as a cookie cutter for an extra large, nine inch by eight inch, Christmas tree cookie.

Changing An Annual Baking Tradition

For years I have been making Christmas tree mini-cakes for my family. Hopefully they won't mind not getting a mini-cake this year. Instead, I decided to make a large Christmas tree cookie and package it with a variety of holiday cookies.

9" by 8" decorated, sugar cookie, Christmas trees.

Cinnamon candies, or red hots, yellow candy stars, and white piped garland and white Christmas bulbs decorate each cookie tree. I used a #3 piping tip to form the white bulbs and garland.

My classic, almost famous, sugar cookie dough became Christmas tree cookies, holly leaf cookies, and snow flake cookies. 

Sallee's Sugar Cookie Recipe

I used a #3 piping tip  to form the white icing features. The black icing was piped using a sixteen inch piping bag with the tip snipped off. To form the reindeer eyes, first pipe a bead of white icing with the #3 inch tip. Next, pipe a dot of black icing on top of the white icing bead. Now you have an eye looking at you.

Peanut butter, roll out cookie dough became Christmas trees and Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer cookies. 

My first time using this dough did not work well. The dough is sticky and soft UNLESS you refrigerate it for at least twenty-four hours. Then, you still have to work quickly to get it rolled out on a pastry mat. An additional, necessary step required flipping the dough over and re-flouring my pastry mat.

Also, I gave my cookie cutters a flour bath. Seriously, I had to submerge them in flour to prevent the dough from sticking to the cutters.

I will be looking for a different peanut butter cookie recipe to use.

Snowflake sugar cookies decorated with pale blue icing and Betty Crocker snowflake decor mix.

Sugar cookie holly leaves and peanut butter Christmas trees. For the holly leaf berries, I sorted out the red trees from the Christmas tree sprinkles and used them for the berries. Later I used a #3 piping tip and white icing to pipe ribbing onto the holly leaf cookies. This detail can be seen below in the fifth picture, or next to the last picture.

Sugar cookie trees decorated with yellow candy stars and Betty Crocker snowflake decors.

Christmas tree cookies decorated with a Wilton sprinkles mix. 

Chocolate bells with crushed candy cane trim. Piped borders were formed with a #5 piping tip.

Chocolate Roll Out Cookies 

Chocolate, roll out cookie dough became Christmas bells and Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer cookies.

Chocolate Cutout Cookie Recipe

I've used this dough before and it rolls out well after being chilled for two hours. 

Decorating Icing Recipe

Decorated and ready to pack in a shirt gift box from the local dollar store.
Christmas print, shirt gift boxes are sold in a three pack for two dollars.

Carefully placed and ready for a lid!