Gingerbread Christmas Tree Recipe
An easy, delicious and fabulously festive gingerbread.
Servings: 4 trees
Calories: 1109kcal
Equipment
- nest of star cookie cutters (5 or 6 sizes)
- stand mixer or handheld electric beaters
- small sieve
- silver or gold paper patty pans
Ingredients
Gingerbread
- 125 grams butter
- ½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed (100 grams)
- 1 egg (60 grams)
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup golden syrup (65 grams) (or treacle)
- 2 ½ cups plain flour (360 grams)
- 3 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon mixed spice
- 1 teaspoon bicarb soda
Buttercream Icing
- 125 grams unsalted butter
- 1 ½ cups icing sugar / powdered sugar (225 grams)
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Decorating
- gold food glitter
- Christmas-themed sprinkles and/or gold or silver cachous
- 1 tablespoon icing sugar / powdered sugar
Instructions
Gingerbread
- Cream butter and sugar.
- Add eggs and vanilla extract and beat well until combined.
- Warm the syrup a little, add to the mixture and beat again.
- Fold in sifted dry ingredients, ⅓ at a time.
- Form mixture into two balls, wrap in plastic food wrap and place in fridge for 1 hour.
- About 10 minutes before you take mixture from fridge, pre-heat oven to 170 degrees celsius / 340 degrees fahrenheit (fan-forced) and grease and line 3 baking trays.
- Roll each ball of mixture out on a floured surface to a thickness of about ½cm.
- Cut out star shapes. You'll need two of each size for each tree, apart from the smallest star - you'll need only one.
- Use a metal spatula to carefully transfer the star shapes to the prepared baking trays. Arrange stars by size so that similar-sized stars are placed on the same trays.
- Bake for 10-15 minutes or until a rich golden colour. (Baking time will depend on several factors including the size of the biscuits. You will need to remove the tray containing the smaller stars earlier than tray containing larger stars.)
- Allow to cool on trays for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Buttercream
- Beat butter, vanilla extract and milk until light and fluffy.
- Add icing sugar a little at a time, beating on low speed. Once combined, beat on high speed for 2-3 minutes.
Decorating
- Build your tree by piping a small amount of buttercream in the centre of one of the largest stars. Place another of the largest stars on top with the points of the star in between the points of the bottom star (rather than being aligned). Continue to do this for each of the star sizes apart from the smallest star. Coat the smallest star in gold food glitter and place in an upright position at the top of the tree (in a small amount of buttercream in the centre of the highest star biscuit that makes up the tree).
- Pipe small amounts of buttercream on the points of the stars (now the branches of your Christmas tree) and add Christmas-themed sprinkles or cachous).
- Dust each tree with a little icing sugar (using a small sieve).
- Allow 12-24 hours setting time.
Notes
Serving: Here, I built the trees on a flattened silver paper patty pan. Just cut from the edge to the start of the flat centre several times so it can be flattened and start by piping a small amount of buttercream in the centre of the patty pan.
Storing: Store gingerbread biscuits (un-iced) in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks. Store gingerbread trees in an airtight container for up to one week.
Freezing: Freeze the (un-iced) baked cookies in freezer bags or an airtight container for up to 3 months.
Nutrition: The nutrition information is an automatically generated estimate and is not guaranteed to be accurate.
Nutrition
Calories: 1109kcal | Carbohydrates: 150g | Protein: 10g | Fat: 53g | Saturated Fat: 33g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 14g | Trans Fat: 2g | Cholesterol: 176mg | Sodium: 506mg | Potassium: 182mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 88g | Vitamin A: 1629IU | Vitamin C: 0.1mg | Calcium: 66mg | Iron: 4mg