Edible Christmas Ornaments

When my boyfriend and I first moved in together I asked him to order us a suitable Christmas tree for the apartment.What I ended up with was the tiniest Christmas tree I had ever seen!! Trying to place Christmas presents under the tree meant that 2 presents in we couldn't even see the tree anymore. Ever since we've had the tree I have been thinking of ways to make it more interesting... Therefore this year I had decided.... Edible Decorations!

I think the most important part when trying to make decorations look good is to think of a colour scheme and stick with it. I chose a teal, sky blue and gold my favourite combination.

Here they are! My sugar cookie decorations!

What You Need: 

Sugar Cookies:

- Christmas Themed cookie cutters. 

- 170 grams of unsalted softened butter

- 1 cup of white sugar

- 2 eggs

- 2 1/2 cups of plain flour

- 1 teaspoon of baking powder

- 1/4 teaspoon of salt

- 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla bean

- 1 pinch of cinnamon 

Royal Icing: 

- 1 egg white 

- 1 1/4 cups of icing sugar 

- 1-2 teaspoons of lemon juice

- Gel food colouring 

- gold lustre dust + a touch of alcohol to make lustre paint

What To Do:

Sugar Cookie:

1. Cream the sugar and butter together

2. Mix in the eggs and the vanilla

3. Mix in the rest of the ingredients until well combined and the dough looks smooth 

4. Separate into 3 discs and refrigerate for 1 hour. 

5. Once the 1 hour is up preheat the oven to 200 degrees

6. To roll our your dough dust your bench with flour and place thick skewers on either side of the rolling pin as thickness guides. 

7. Use your cookie cutter to cut out the desired shapes. All my Shapes were around 3-5 cm's . 

8.  Make sure you create holes in the shapes big enough for a string to threat through. (I used the tip of a small round piping nozzle)

9. Bake for 6 minutes or until golden on the edges

10. Allow the cookies to cool completely before decorating

If you have seen my old blog post you may recognise the rolling pin. That's right this is my dream rolling pin... I found sitting at my desk one day because my amazing boss surprised me with it! ... in love <3

Skewers, rubber bands and rulers are great thickness guides 

Royal Icing: 

1. Mix your lump free icing sugar with the egg whites and lemon juice. 

2. Once it is completely combined separate into 3 bowls 

3. Mix in your desired colours

* Tip: I hate sifting icing sugar so my lazy way of getting rid of all lumps is placing it in a food processor or spice grinder and blitzing it for around 20- 30 seconds. Gets rid of all the lumps every time!

Assembling:

1. Instead of piping the icing on, this recipe is super easy. You simply dip the cookies into the icing and shake off the excess. 

2. When the royal icing has dried you can paint white ones with gold lustre dust that have been mixed in a little alcohol. For the Baubles I used a spoon to add polka dots that I painted Gold. 

3. Make sure you keep the holes clear for string threading. 

4. Once everything has dried thread each of the cookies with some thin twine. 

5. Now for the fun part... decorate your Christmas Tree with these beautiful ornaments

Drum Roll please...... My tiny Christmas tree in all it's glory!

This is a great idea if you have guests at a party to have their names written on the baubles and they could take theirs off the tree and eat them. 

Enjoy

xx Mel.