Chocolate Cookie Christmas Tree by Donna Hay

Here is the easy to follow recipe and instructions to recreate this amazing Christmas Star Cookie Tree.  Plus it's chocolate flavoured, what more could one want?!

Ingredients:

125g unsalted butter, softened

½ cup (110g) caster sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ cups (225g) plain flour, sifted

¼ cup (25g) Dutch cocoa, sifted

Icing:

½ cup (80g) icing sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons boiling water

Method:

Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 6-8 minutes or until pale and creamy.  Add the egg and vanilla and beat for a further 2-3 minutes or until well combined.  Add the flour and cocoa and beat until the mixture just comes together to form a smooth dough.  Roll the dough out between two sheets of baking paper to 3mm thick and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until firm.

Preheat the oven to 160°C.  Using 12cm, 11cm, 10cm, 9cm, 8cm, 7cm, 6cm, 5cm, 4cm and 3cm six-pointed star cookie cutters, cut out three stars of each size, re-rolling the dough as necessary.  Place on large lightly greased baking trays lined with non stick baking paper and bake for 10 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.  To make the icing, mix to combine icing sugar and water until smooth.  Stack the stars starting from the largest to the smallest, securing each start with a little icing.  Dust the tree with icing sugar to serve.  

Makes one tree.

My tips for this one:

• Our set of 10 six-pointed stars are the perfect sizes to make this tree.  
• Use 6 pointed star cookie cutters to get the perfectly symmetrical look as on the cover of Donna Hay Celebrate magazine 2014.
• If the dough becomes too soft and tricky to cut out just pop it back in the fridge for 10 minutes.
• Want to make the gorgeous deer also?  The cutter is available from us here and we also have shared the recipe here