Holiday Gingerbread Tree
Make this super fun gingerbread tree for Christmas this yearif making a whole house just seems like too much of a good thing. Easy todecorate, simple to customize, and fun to gift for the holidays.
Equipment
- Pizza Cutter or Sharp Knife
- Foil Wrapped Cardboard Base
Instructions
Getting Started With Shapes
- Make your favorite gingerbread cookie recipe and roll out to 1/4" thick in the shape of a rectangle.
- If using graduated star-shaped cookie cutters, cut out one of each size.
- If making a customized 3-D tree, visualize two rectangles within the one you've just rolled out, the length of which should reflect however tall you want your tree to be. Cut out the rectangles, try to make them the same length and width, with a pizza cutter.
- Then, cut a diagonal line from one corner to the other in each rectangle. Move all excess dough out of the way and place your now 4 triangles on a baking sheet.
Bake & Cool
- Place the cut out gingerbread onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. Space them so they don't touch, but the gingerbread shouldn't puff up too much.
- Right when it comes out of the oven, use that pizza cutter to trim up any ragged edges. They don't have to be perfect, just mostly straight.
- Cool completely before assembling.
Assembly of Cookie Cutter Tree
- To assemble a cookie cutter gingerbread tree, start with the largest cookie on the bottom and add a dollop of royal icing or marshmallow piping in the middle.
- Continue to add cookies with a dollop of sticky material in the center, going from the largest to the smallest on top. Be sure to stop and re-center the growing tree as you go.
- Decorate as soon as the tree is set up firmly. This usually takes a few hours or overnight.
Assembly of Custom 3-D Tree
- Put icing or marshmallow on the bottom and sides of two triangles one at a time. Stand the triangles together to form one large triangle, affixing them together down the center. Have someone help you!
- Hold them a moment or two while the icing cools dries and hardens. Affix another triangle along the seam down the center, one on each side. This will create a three dimensional tree out of the four pieces.
- Dry completely for a few hours or overnight, and then decorate.
Notes
First, find a gingerbread cookie recipe that you like. It needs to be a gingerbread that will harden, so be sure it's a cookie recipe and not a soft, sweet bread recipe.
Plan to make your dough a good six hours or overnight before you need to assemble the tree because it needs to fully cool.
Give the extra pieces of dough to your kids to experiment with shapes, cut out gingerbread men and otherwise have fun. There are a lot of steps to making a gingerbread tree but the first parts are kind of boring. The children can join in
on the gluing and decorating with candy part. That's the fun part!
If you roll out your dough onto a silicone baking sheet or parchment paper, then you can just slide the sheet and it's contents onto your cookie pan.
I usually bake the gingerbread the night before I need to assemble the structure. I mostly do that so I don't have to worry about the whole process all at once!
Use royal icing or marshmallow piping to assemble and decorate your gingerbread tree. The marshmallow piping tastes a lot better than the icing, in my opinion.
You can also use hot glue to put your gingerbread tree together, but obviously, DO NOT EAT THE GLUE!
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!