Snowball Trees

Every Christmas my sister, Keren, and I make cookies.  We started this when I moved away from home for university, because it was a good way to spend some quality time with her while I was home for Christmas.  That and we both love baking.  Our specialty almost every Christmas is shortbread cookies, as we like to be able to cut out the shapes and more importantly, decorate them to the nines!  In the last few years, we have been trying new recipes out.  This year in my Christmas cookie hunt, I found a recipe for Snowball Tree Cookies from BHG, which are little balls rolled to be little Christmas trees.  You dye the majority of the cookie dough, keeping 1/3 of the dough out and roll the green dough into 1/2 balls, placing them in a triangle in rows of one, two, three, four and the white dough into 3/4 balls and placing them on the bottom.   Once they are backed, you make an icing to drizzle on the cookies and decorate them.  These looked like they would be a lot of fun to make and something Keren would enjoy, so the weekend before Christmas, we ventured to make them.

The dough was really quick to make up.  Because we had a busy weekend, we made the dough the day before we planned on making them, although in hindsight, I would have just make the dough right before we went to make the cookies, because it was easier to work with at room temperature, rather than straight from the fridge.

Dough fresh out of the fridge

Once we were ready to make the cookies, we recruited my mom to help, as I had read that making these cookies could be a little time consuming, and we didn't get started until late in the evening, after having Christmas at my Nanny's.

We took out the white dough and I proceeded to dye the rest of the dough green.  I found that this went a lot quicker than I expected.  I think it was because my last experience of dying something with food colouring, was when my sister-in-law dyed fondant red for my nephew's birthday cake and it took her like 2 hours to get the right colour...

Mixing the dough to make it green.
Mom's in the background making all the white balls.

The green balls!  Keren said they look like the French Peas from
Veggie Tales.

 Once I got the colour down, we went to town making the balls.  We had a hard time getting them to be the size they wanted, because they needed to be really tiny, which meant we didn't have enough to make as many cookies and the recipe had said it would make.  In the end we made 11 trees and I made a wreath with the extras.  Ta Da!

Since they were bigger, they ended up taking longer to cook then the recipe said.  We watched all of Merry Madagascar before they were done (so much for 8-10 minutes). Once they were out and cooling, Mom and I made the icing (Keren was done with the cookies at this point).  Instead of using the recipe that they said to make (as it makes A LOT), I made one my mom had used earlier that day on a cake.  It was only a cup of icing sugar, a couple tbsp of milk and 1 tbsp of vanilla.  Even at that there was icing left over.  Once that was made, Mom and I decorated them all pretty, just like real Christmas trees :)  Aren't they pretty?

They even taste good too!!

Snowball Tree Recipe
(originally from: http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/snowball-trees/)

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

½ cup sugar

1 tablespoon milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

Green paste food coloring

1 recipe Powdered Sugar Icing

Decorative candies

Directions

1. In a large bowl beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in milk and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Using a wooden spoon, stir in any remaining flour. Remove 1/2 cup of the dough. Tint the remaining dough with green food coloring.
2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. For each cookie, use the green dough to shape ten 1/2-inch balls. On an ungreased cookie sheet, arrange balls in a row of four, topped by a row of three, then two, then one on top. As you arrange the balls, gently press them into each other. Use the plain dough to make a 3/4-inch ball and place it at the bottom of the tree for a trunk. Repeat with the remaining dough, leaving 2 inches between cookies on cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are light brown. Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Carefully transfer cookies to a wire rack; let cool.
4. Drizzle Powdered Sugar Icing back and forth over cookies to look like strings for lights. Add decorative candies to icing for lights. Let stand until icing sets.

Powdered Sugar Icing

Ingredients

4 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 – 4 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. In a medium bowl stir together powdered sugar, vanilla, and enough milk (3 to 4 tablespoons) to make drizzling consistency.