The holidays are synonymous with a few things, and among the top of this list are baking and cookies. These Slice and Bake Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies are as fun to make as they are to eat, and they couldn’t be more adorable. These sugar cookies have the classic look of the festive shape cookies from the store, but the flavor and fun of homemade ones. Starting from a classic sugar cookie dough, these cute cookies are the perfect simple treat to kick off the holiday season and make wonderful gifts for family or friends. With a little time and practice, you’ll be slicing up cookies that look even better than store-bought.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like…
The Christmas season has officially started. For my family, that means it’s after Thanksgiving. We tend to wait until then to really get into Christmas and begin all of the decorating. This weekend, we headed out to our local Christmas tree farm to cut down our tree – another tradition of ours. Having a real tree has always been non-negotiable for us, and it is so much fun to head out to the farm and cut it ourselves. This is one of my earliest Christmas memories and I always look forward to going, whether rain or shine (or hopefully snow!). When the trees come home, it’s time to start all the decorating.
After my sister and I decorated our trees, my dad and I put the finishing touches on our Christmas lights outside. It truly was “beginning to look a lot like Christmas!” And then my sister, Gianna, decided to really kick off the season – with Christmas cookies. She wanted to recreate the adorable shaped sugar cookies that so many people love to buy around holidays. And I have to say, they turned out pretty darn good. Adorable little trees surrounded by sprinkles, soft and scented with vanilla, kicked off our Christmas cookie season. Here’s how she did it.
The Sugar Cookie Dough
The dough for these cookies is pretty standard. Flour. Sugar. Butter. Vanilla. Sugar cookies are classic for a reason: they’re simple, user-friendly, easy to shape, and liked by most people. You could always add other flavoring to these though, if you’d like. Almond or peppermint extract would work especially well here, if you enjoy those. You could also get creative and use traditional sugar cookie dough for the center tree and chocolate sugar cookie dough for the outside, or vice versa, but we decided to keep it simple.
This dough is easy to roll out and cut shapes from, which is important for creating that cute little tree. Green gel food coloring easily mixes into the dough to get a perfect evergreen shade, but this is also customizable if you wanted to add another shape or color to your cookies.
Looking for other cookie recipes? Try these:
Cranberry Thyme Shortbread Cookies
Soft and Rich Chocolate Chip Cookies
Nana’s Almond Shortbread Cookies
Peanut Butter and Jelly Macarons
Shaping the Cookies
Slice and bake cookies can be designed in a few different ways. Sometimes they are simple with no design in the center and other times people are able to create long “sticks” of shaped dough that are then wrapped in an outer layer of dough, only revealing the final shape when sliced (this works well for rounder designs like snowmen). For these trees, however, Gianna wanted to maintain the crisp edges of a classic Christmas tree shape. To do this, she used a mini Christmas tree cookie cutter to cut out many baby tree cookies. Then, the little cookies are aligned and stacked on top of one another, creating a long center “tree.” This tree is then carefully wrapped in more sugar cookie dough to form the final log that can be sliced and baked into perfectly round, classic cookies.
There are a few tricks to help your cookies come out as perfectly as possible. Freezing the stack of baby trees helps it to hold its shape when adding the outer cookie dough layer and when slicing the final cookies. Another trick is to roll small “ropes” of sugar cookie dough to fill in the spaces around the tree shape (you can see what I mean in the pictures above).
Creating these ropes of dough helps to fill in all the gaps of the tree cutouts without deforming the shape of the tree. Then, the final layer of dough can be added to create a nice, even, round cookie. Rolling the outside of the cookie dough log in sprinkles adds a nice touch of color, but is optional.
Finishing the Slice and Bake Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies
Now for the best part! After placing the cookie dough log in the freezer for a bit, it’s time to slice the cookies. Chilling the dough one more time helps the slices to come out clean and even, helping the cookies to look their best. When slicing, aim to use a sharp knife with smooth, even motions to help the cookies hold their shape. When baking, be careful to pull the cookies from the oven on time, as sugar cookies can overbake easily. They should still look a little bit shiny and soft when they come out, as they will firm up a bit as they cool. That’s it! Now you can enjoy your cookies fresh from the oven, cool and store them for later, or package them up to give as gifts. It’s best to store these cookies in an airtight container to keep them from becoming dry.
I hope you love these Slice and Bake Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies as much as I do! If you make this recipe, leave a comment and let me know what you thought or feel free to ask a question! I’d also love to see what you made! Tag me in your food pics @fortheperfectbite or use #fortheperfectbite on Instagram.
Slice and Bake Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies
Equipment
- Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer
- Mini Tree Cookie Cutter
Ingredients
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 sticks salted butter, softened
- 1 large egg
- 2 tbsp vanilla extract
- 3 cups all-purpose flour, separated
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- ¼ tsp kosher salt
- ½ tbsp milk, if needed
- green food coloring
- sprinkles
Instructions
Make the Dough
- In the bowl of the stand mixer or using a hand mixer, cream together the sugar and the butter on medium-high to high speed until light in color and very fluffy, about 3 minutes.
- Mix the egg and vanilla extract into the sugar and butter until combined.
- Reduce the mixer speed to medium or medium-low and begin incorporating the first cup of flour, all of the baking powder, and all of the cream of tartar, and the kosher salt into the wet ingredients, sprinkling a little at a time, until well combined.
- Continue adding the additional 2 cups of flour, ¼ cup at a time, until incorporated into the dough.If the dough holds together nicely when pinched with your finger, it is ready. If it is a little too crumbly and doesn't hold, you can mix in the milk, if needed.
Shape the Cookies
- Separate the dough into thirds. To ⅓ of the dough, knead in a few drops of green gel food coloring until your desired color is achieved.
- On a clean work surface, roll the green dough out to an even ¼ inch thickness. Use a mini tree cookie cutter to cut out several trees. Re-roll out the excess dough and continue cutting trees until all the green dough has been used. Carefully stack the tree cutouts on top of one another, being sure to align them as accurately as possible. *Very gently* press the stack to adhere the trees to one other.Create three even stacks of trees.
- Divide the remaining plain dough into thirds once again (one portion for each stack of trees).
- Place these tree stacks in the freezer to firm up, about 10 minutes. Keep each tree stack in the freezer until ready to use for the next step.
- Use the uncolored dough to roll out small ropes of dough, as long as your tree stacks, and about ¼ inch thick.
- Remove the tree stacks from the freezer. To start, press the “trunks” of the trees into one of the ropes, creating a base of plain dough.Gently lay the dough ropes along the crevices of your trees, carefully pressing the dough to fill in the gaps. Work your way around the tree stacks until all of the gaps have been evenly filled in with dough.
- Once you've put a plain dough rope in each crevice of the trees all the way around, repeat on all of the points of the trees, covering any gaps until all green dough, except for the ends, is covered in plain dough (see pictures above).
- Press any extra plain dough evenly on the sides of the dough log to help create more of a circle.Repeat with any remaining tree stacks.
- Carefully pour sprinkles out onto your clean work surface.Gently roll your cookie logs in sprinkles to coat the outside and to carefully adhere the cookies together without deforming the trees.
- Wrap the cookie dough logs in cling wrap and place in the freezer to chill.Keep rolls in the freezer until just firm, checking on them every 10 minutes in order to ensure they do not get so hard they crack when cut.Or, keep in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Remove the cookie dough logs from the freezer and remove the plasic wrap. Use a sharp knife to slice the logs into individual cookies between ¼ and ½-inch thick. Place the cookies on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies about 8 minutes, until just barely set. Allow to cool slightly before removing from the baking sheet.
- Serve and enjoy!
Notes
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