Now that the Christmas holidays are here, it is a great opportunity to make great plans away from home with our children, such as seeing the lighting of the streets, taking advantage of the planning of museum workshops and cultural centers, or even walking through parks and forests enjoying of the last remnants of autumn. But it is also time to spend more time at home, as a family, with more available on our part to do joint activities and deepen that warm and enduring family feeling over time.
And if it’s also cold outside, what is better than cooking something together? From Dulce y Diferente, experts in decorative cookies, personalized cakes, and cupcakes, we propose a simple, delicious recipe that can be made together, even with the youngest children: Christmas cookies in the shape of a snowflake or a Christmas tree.
What do you need to make Christmas Cookies?
Ingredients:
- 225 grams of butter at room temperature
- 160 grams of sugar
- a medium egg
- 420 grams of wheat flour
- a teaspoon of vanilla essence
Step by step of Christmas Cookies
- In a bowl put the flour that we will have previously sifted with a strainer.
- Add the butter and mix. It is important that the butter is at room temperature. If it is fresh out of the fridge, it will be very difficult to integrate it with the flour, and there will be lumps. It is not worth melting it in the microwave because it will be very liquid and the dough will not have the right texture.
- Add the sugar and mix well.
- Lightly beat the egg on a plate and add to the previous mixture. Everything has to be well integrated.
We will put the oven at 170 degrees to warm up. We take a baking paper, fold it and put half of the mixture in between, pass a rolling pin or a bottle to spread it, leaving it about half a centimeter thick. We let it cool for a couple of hours and do the same with the other part that we have left.
Once the dough is cold, we will take the cutter that we have chosen and we will put the cookies on a baking tray with paper so that they do not stick. We will leave a space of 2-3 centimeters between them, since they swell in the oven, so that they do not stick together.
We will put them in the already hot oven for about 12 minutes, since it depends on the oven if it has a fan or not. The best thing is that we look at them in 6 minutes and if necessary we turn the tray over, always very carefully, with gloves for the heat, and leave them for another 6 minutes. Once they are golden brown around the edges, remove them and let them cool on the same tray.
How to decorate your Christmas cookies
We will need white fondant for the snowflake and green fondant for the tree, a little condensed milk and transparent plastic wrap. And we will almost have our Christmas dessert ready!
For the snowflake:
- We will take a small piece of white fondant and we will knead it by hand against the table so that it gains elasticity, if it sticks to the table add a little bit of icing sugar. We roll it out with a rolling pin so that it is about two millimeters thick and cut with the same cutter that we made the cookies. The rest of the fondant that we have left over must be covered with the transparent film since in contact with the air it dries.
- We will dip our finger a little in condensed milk to paste the fondant, we will place the shape that we have cut on top of the cookie and we will press it gently with the palm, very loose, as the cookie can break. We will take sugar with our fingers and pour it on top of the snowflake, squeezing it gently so that it is embedded in the fondant and thus gives the sensation of shine.
For the Christmas tree:
- We will do the same with the green fondant, we will take a small piece and knead it, put it on the table and stretch it out, cutting the shape with the tree cutter. We will dip our finger in condensed milk and spread it on the cookie. We will take a little bit of green fondant and we will make some Band-Aids to put it horizontally on each layer of the treetop, and we will put the silhouette that we had previously cut on top.
- We must remember to cover the fondant that we no longer use well with the transparent film. With our fingers we will press where we have placed the strips, we will take a teaspoon and with the edge we will make stripes as if they were the leaves.
- And we already have some delicious Christmas cookies in the shape of a Christmas tree or snowflakes ready to share on a cold afternoon with a delicious chocolate, or even to give to your friends.