Snowball Tree Cookies

This recipe makes the most adorable and festive tree cookie but let me start off by telling you it is extremely time consuming so if you venture to make this cookie make sure you have plenty of time and lots of patience:)

Snowball Tree Cookies

Ingredients:

For Cookie:

1 cup butter,softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp milk

1 teas vanilla

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

Green food coloring



For icing:

4 cups powdered sugar

1 teas vanilla

3-4 tbsp milk

decorative candies

In large bowl beat butter with an electric mixer for 30 seconds.  Add sugar scraping sides of bowl periodically.  Beat in milk and vanilla until smooth.  Gradually add flour (I added 1/2 cup at a time to ensure it mixes well.) 

The origianl recipe said to divide the dough in half and then add food coloring to one half however when I make again I will only remove 1/4 of the dough for the tree stumps because I had lots of plain dough left over. 

Preheat oven to 325. For each cookie use the ggreen dough to make 10 1/2 inch balls and begin shaping like a tree in a triangle shape(Make sure you keep your balls small or your cookies with be huge. Start with the top and work your way down making 4 rows. 1 on the 1st, 2 on the 2nd, 3 on the 3rd, and 4 on the 4th.  Make sure to press slightly together to make sure dough bakes together. Add a slightly larger plain ball at the bottom for the tree trunk.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges are slightly brown.  Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes then remove and add to colling rack to cool completely.

TO make your icing:
IN a small bowl mix together powdered sugar, milk and vanilla until desired drizzling cinsistency.  This can be slightly messy. You want to drizzle your icing back and forth like a string of lights. I used my pampered chef icing decorator and used the smallest tip for decorating but remember this icing is slightly runny and quite sticky so be careful when applying.  Ice 3 cookies at a time so the icing doesnt dry out before you place your decorative candies(lights)  This was the hardest part because they wont just sprinkle on them you actually need to place them idividually to make them look right.

Now your ready to tray them up and serve this adorable cookie.  This is a great recipe that I found on the Better Home & Gardens recipe and will be a party hit:)

This recipe will make about 24 cookies.

Mint Chocolate Thumb Print Cookies

Looking for some fun Holiday Cookies I have found some fun treats while surfing the internet so I thought I would share a couple for you to enjoy with your family.  This Betty Crocker recipe is very simple and an extremely tastey Mint Chocolate Thumbprint Cookie! Hope you enjoy:)

Mint Chocolate Thumb Print Cookies

Here are the Ingredients you will need:

Cookies
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup butter (softened)
1 teas. vanilla
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 Cups All purpose Flour
1/4 cup Unsweetened Baking Cocoa

Mint Filling
1/4 cup butter (softened)
1 cup powdered Sugar
1 TBSP. milk
1/4 tsp. peppermint extract
2 drops of green food coloring

Drizzle topping
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 teas. shortening

To make your cookies Heat oven to 375. In large bowl cream together sugar, butter and vanilla until fluffy.  Beat in egg yolk until smooth.  Then gradually add flour and cocoa (I will tell you the recipe only calls for 1 1/2 cups of flour and my batter wqas a little cream and unrollable so I added a little more flour until desired consistency. 

Shape dough into balls about 1 inch in size.  Place on ungreased cookies sheet and then with your thumb make an indentation in the middle of the cookie then bake for 7-9 minutes.  Remove from oven and immediately place cookies on cooling rack.  Let cool completely before adding filling (about 30 minutes).

For filling:
In small bowl cream butter and powdered sugar together on low speed until smooth.  Meat  in milk & peppermint extract then add desired food coloring.

Pplace chocolate chips & shortening in a ziploc bag and heat in microwave for about 1 minute.  Gently squeeze bag until chocolate is smooth. Cut a tiny corner off of the bag then drizzle over each cookie.  Let stand about 1 hour before serving. I placed mine in the fridge to allow filling to set up better.


A variation of this recipe. You could also do red food coloring instead of green adn then sprinkle Crushed Peppermint candies on top and they would be very tasty as well:)
This recipe make about 4 dozen cookies.
Serve & enjoy.