Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies

Aren't these the cutest little Christmas Tree cookies you've ever seen? I'll bet you are scratching your head and wondering "How in the world did she do that?  Is there a fancy new gadget from WS that I've missed, a new cookie cutter perhaps or mold that forms the tree with lots of fiddling and frustration involved?" Ha..ha..ha...not this time.

For Halloween I made little sugar cookies using a basic cookie dough and a very simple technique  that produced little multi-colored cookies in the shape of candy corn.  It was one of my most read posts and when I looked at the photos recently I realized that the little shapes would make perfect Christmas trees.  Genius...right?  

I divided the prepared cookie dough in half and then cut one of the halves in two so I had three balls of dough.  I mixed green food coloring gel into the large ball, mixed red gel into one of the small balls and left the third ball plain. If you read the candy corn post you will see how to line a loaf pan with parchment paper and layers the colors of dough to produce the desired result.  As you can see in the photo, I layered green dough, then plain, then another layer of green.

When the dough is well chilled remove it from the pan and cut into 1/4 inch slices, then cut the slices into triangle shapes.  Add little red bases to the trees and dip into sanding sugar.  Place on a cookie sheet and decorate with little colored balls. Bake at 375 degrees for 7-9 minutes.  The candy corn cookie dough recipe called for orange juice and zest. I substituted one teaspoon vanilla in this recipe.