Let’s decorate and eat a Christmas Tree this holiday season. Yes, EAT!! This Christmas season, do not just decorate a Christmas tree but also eat one made of cookies!! This Cookie Tree recipe is exceptionally unique and fun to make for your kids!
Year-end calls for lots of celebrations. We meet and greet our loved ones, have dinner parties with them, and exchange gifts as well. It’s such a humble experience to make food for your loved ones and enjoy it together.
This year, make something special for everyone. A Christmas Cookie Tree that has elements like almond and ginger cookies stacked one over the other using dark chocolate ganache and decorated with numerous dry fruits, nuts, and sprinkles to resemble a Christmas tree.
These ring-shaped cookies are crispy and have almond flour, which is flavored with ginger. To sandwich the cookies and stack them, dark chocolate ganache, which is also flavored with ginger and Cinnamon. Decorated with loads of nuts, this dessert is truly a perfect winter dessert.
Christmas Cookie Tree Recipe Video Tutorial
Why You’ll Love This Recipe?
- Unique: You must have made many cookies and cakes during Christmas. But I can vouch that you haven’t ever made a cookie tree that looks like a Christmas tree. The whole idea is so unique that it is really fun to make, and everyone would definitely love it, too.
- Winter Flavours: The cookie tree has elements flavored using almond flour, ginger, dry fruits, and Cinnamon powder. All these flavors are specially used in desserts that are curated for the winter season. So, it may not look like a traditional dessert, but it indeed tastes like one.
- Easy and Fun to make: What better way to celebrate the holiday season than making desserts together? I’m sure the kids and grown-ups will enjoy making the cookie tree as much as decorating the real Christmas tree.
Important Ingredients Used In The Recipe
- Almond flour: The use of almond flour, apart from regular all-purpose flour, gives the cookie a unique flavor but also a different texture from a standard cookie.
- Corn flour; It helps reduce the gluten level in the cookie dough, which in turn makes the cookie crispy and less chewy.
- Butter: Salted butter here helps to add adequate fat to the cookies, which gives a nice buttery flavor and crumbly texture. Since we are rubbing the butter with flour here instead of using the creaming method, the process helps reduce the formation of excess gluten.
- Fresh ginger and ginger powder: Just like gingerbread cookies, these cookies also have the dominant flavor of ginger. This is given by using freshly grated ginger as well as ginger powder.
- Icing sugar: To give the cookie a snappy texture, icing sugar is used. It helps make the cookie have a compact texture.
- Cinnamon powder: The ganache is given a unique flavor by adding cinnamon powder.
How To Make Christmas Cookie Tree
Preparation: Collect and measure all ingredients required to make the cookie tree. Preheat the oven to 170C (otg mode: upper rod+lower rod+ fan). Line a baking tray with a silicon mat.
Method For Cookies
Rubbing: In a bowl, take almond flour and icing sugar. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients using your fingertips. Rub until you get a sand-like crumbly texture.
Dry Ingredients: In a different bowl, sift flour, salt, ginger powder and corn flour. Add grated ginger to it. Mix this well. Add this mixture to the butter mixture made earlier.
Add Milk: Finally, add milk to form a smooth dough. Make sure the dough is neither too soft nor too hard.
Shaping: Roll the cookie dough between two sheets of butter paper with 0.5cm of thickness. Freeze the rolled dough for 15 minutes. After freezing, cut hollow discs using round cookie cutters of different sizes such as 8cm, 6cm, 5cm, 4cm etc.
Bake: Place them on a lined baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes (OTG mode: upper rod+lower rod+ fan) or until edges turn golden brown.
Method for Dark Chocolate Ganache
Melt Chocolate: Using a microwave, melt the dark couverture chocolate, stirring in between intervals.
Warm Cream: In a separate bowl, warm cream. Make sure not to boil it.
Make Ganache: add the warm cream to the melted chocolate and mix to form a smooth ganache.
Add Flavour: Finally, add ginger and cinnamon powder to the ganache and mix.
Method for Christmas Chocolate Star
Prepare: Place an OHP sheet on the work surface. Place a sheet with a star shape printed on it below the OHP sheet.
Trace: Now trace the star shape using melted dark compound chocolate and let it set. Brush gold dust on it once it’s set.
Method For Assembly
Stack the Tree: Once the cookies have cooled, place the biggest cookie on the bottom and pipe the ganache over it. Place another cookie of the same size and again pipe the ganache. Now place one size smaller cookie this time. Pipe ganache and again place cookie of same size. Continue to stack cookies until you get a tree-like shape.
Garnish: To garnish the cookie tree, put cold glaze dots all around the tree and place tutty fruity, dry fruits, gold pearls, and white pearls on it. Lastly, place the golden chocolate star on top and dust the tree with nueschee.
Chef’s Tips For The Recipe
Shape After Freezing
Cut the discs only after freezing the rolled cookie dough. Freezing will help them shape better and cut neatly.
Tip For Decoration
Use various colors of tutty fruity and nuts to decorate the cookie tree. Play with the colors and texture.
Tip For Stacking
Use a round nozzle to pipe the ganache for an even layer. Do not overline the cookie with ganache as it won’t look neat while stacking.
How To Store Christmas Cookie Tree?
Consume the assembled cookie tree the same day for the best taste.
You can keep baked cookies separately and assemble them later. Cling wrap the cookies and place them in an airtight box. You can keep them at room temperature or in the refrigerator and use them within a week.
You can even store the cookie dough for a week in the refrigerator or a month in the freezer.
Ganache can be stored in the refrigerator for 3-4 days.
More Easy Recipes
Make some more delicious recipes this holiday season.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, you can. However, this will change the cookie texture and flavor slightly.
Besides ginger and cinnamon powder, if you want to make a different flavored ganache, you can simply add those flavors. For example, you can use raspberry puree or orange marmalade to make the ganache by replacing cream with purees. You can even add any essence of your choice.
