On the eve of Christmas the old Santa sneaks into our home secretly and drops beautiful gifts. When we wake up in the morning, we find them everywhere, a new day starts with surprise, joy and hope. It makes our life blissful. Hope this Christmas brings the gift of peace and tranquility in all of our lives.

On this occasion, I share a jar of sugar cookies with my friends. They are sweet, full of colours and made on cute little Chirstmas trees. Wish you all a merry Christmas !!!!

Ingredients for 40 pieces :

1. All purpose flour – 195 gm.
2. Butter (unsalted, cut into small pieces) – 113 gm.
3. Baking soda – ½ teaspoon
4. Salt – ¼ teaspoon
5. Granulated white sugar – 100 gm.
6. Egg (at room temperature) – 1
7. Vanilla extract – 1 teaspoon
8. Cookie cutter (I used Christmas tree shaped cutter)
9. Food colour gels (red, yellow and green) and sugar sprinkles for decoration

For Royal Icing :

1. Egg white – 1
2. Lemon juice – 1 teaspoon
3. Powdered sugar – 200 gm.

Procedure :

Grease 2 baking sheets with a little butter.

Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl using a hand mixer or stand mixer or simply by a wooden spoon until fluffy. Beat the egg and vanilla extract in it.

In a separate bowl sift the flour, stir in the salt and baking soda.

Now gradually stir in the flour mixture to the butter mixture using a spatula to form a smooth dough.

Wrap the dough with a clingfilm and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.

Then take out the dough from the refrigerator, leave for 10 minutes and roll out on a floured work surface to 5 mm. thick.

Stamp out shapes with the cookie cutter. Re-roll the trimmings and stamp out more shapes until the dough is used up.

Place the cookies on the prepared baking sheets and chill for further 15 minutes.

Meanwhile preheat your oven at 180ºC/350ºF.

Bake the cookies in the oven for 8-10 minutes or until the sides are light brown. Let them cool to room temperature.

To make “Royal Icing” whisk the egg white with lemon juice in a bowl. Gradually add powdered sugar, 2-3 tbspoon at a time, and stir with a wooden spoon. Keep adding sugar until all of it is used and you get a thick creamy texture.

Now divide the icing into three small parts and one large. Give the large part green colour and two small parts red and yellow using just a few drops of food colour gels. Leave the other small part of the icing as white.

Now put a tip with tiny hole in a pipping bag and fill with half of the green icing. Pipe the icing over the cookies to make border. Add little water to the remaining green icing until you achieve spreading/flooding consistency. Then using a small spoon spread this over the cookies to cover the vacant space within the border. Use a toothpick to fill the gap, if any, along the edges.

Now spread the sugar sprinkles over half of the cookies.

Fill other three pipping bags with red, yellow and white icing. Put dots over remaining cookies with these three colours. Then make a zig-zag line with the yellow icing.

Let the icing to become completely dry before serving. It will take few hours. I left the cookies over night to make the icing dry.

Note:

1. You can decorate the cookies the way you like most and find attractive and not necessarily the way I described.