Christmas Cutout Cookies

Maybe it’s just me, but the holidays wouldn’t feel like the holidays if I didn’t have an iced cutout cookie on my cookie plate. My decorating style is a bit homely, but whenever I get a “vision” of what I want my cookies to look like, I can’t help but try them out.

This time I thought of creating a simple winter treescape – using a couple of pastel blues and greens, using different shapes and sizes of trees, and plenty of variety in the decorating.

I used the same recipe as for my summer sailing and ice cream cookies a couple of months ago. As I didn’t have all of the cookie cutters I needed, I searched online for various tree cookie cutter shapes printed out a bunch and just cut them out out of paper. Because I used paper templates for many of them, it took a little longer to cut them out by simply drawing around the paper template. But at the end, I had a good variety of different trees that would make an interesting treescape and afternoon tea plate.

I tried tipless piping bags for the first time – the ones from Celebakes, and I really liked not having to mess with tips. These are nice and flexible and easy to handle.

I used a version of royal icing from Megan Warne using meringue powder instead of egg whites (and I’d recommend one of her cookie decorating classes, if you have a chance to take one!). I mixed up two consistencies of royal icing for each color – a flood and a detail consistency.

I tend to be a somewhat messy decorator, and I lose a few cookies in the process of trying out different designs, and use up a few toothpicks as well as I try to correct my unsteady hand! Strictly an amateur, but still, I feel compelled to try.

So ended up with quite a few I was happy with, even enough to make my treescape, day and starry night versions as well. A dusting of powder sugar, and voila!