Hi I am Nicole Ferrigno. I am here today with Lizzie Evaline. We are with Paisley Fig Pastry. Today, we are showing you how to make holiday cookies. Next, we are going to show you how to finish our Christmas tree ornament cookies. It s a sugar cookie dough base and we have had our sugar cookie dough chilling in the refrigerator for about an hour till it got nice and firm.

We are now going to roll the cookie dough out on a lightly floured surface. That s really nice, smooth dough, easy to work with. I wouldn t use a whole lot more flour that you think you need, just a little bit here and there so that the dough doesn t stick to the countertop. You are going to roll these cookies to about a half an inch or so.

For today s purposes, we have selected a Christmas tree cookie cutter. You certainly could choose a different shape. You could do a bulb, like a bulb ornament, you could do a snowman, really, the possibilities are endless, something holiday inspired. This is an edible cookie but it can also double as an ornament. So, that s really cool about this. We are going to do just five or so for demonstration purposes, certainly, you should continue to roll your dough out and get as many as you can. Give them away as gifts, serve them at your next holiday party, whenever you like.

I am going to talk a little bit about this silpat baking sheet. With this particular recipe, I would say it's very important that you use a silpat or silicon baking sheet. What we are going to do with this cookie is cut a center out of it and then fill the center with our clear, hard candies, in this case we have Jolly Ranchers that are crushed up.

We are going to fill the center with the candy pieces. The silpat helps in this particular case for the cookie itself to not really glue itself to the cookie sheet. The silpat is just such a nice nonstick surface. I think it will make this particular cookie a real breeze. So, Lizzie stamps the cookies out in a Christmas tree shape. She is just cutting long triangles out at the center. You could do a square, you could do a round, whatever you like.

Then, what we will do is we will load the cookies on to the tray. Little small offset spatula comes in handy, it s a nice tool to have. This is a great ornamentation idea and it s what a lot of people tend to use for gingerbread houses, for the windows of the gingerbread houses. It has got a sort of, a stained glass looking effect which is really nice.

So, to sprinkle a little bit into the center and the heat of the oven will just really melt the candies to liquid. Till then, fill them in that hollow center and then, when you pull them out of the oven, the candy will reset itself to its hardened texture. It has nice pretty color which is a really nice effect. Now, the other thing just to note, if you are going to make these into ornaments, as soon as we pull them out of the oven, what we will do is cut a very, very small hole. You could do it using the tip of pairing knife, it will be even better if you could get a very, very small pastry tip and stamp out a small hole at the top of the tree and that tree would actually string the ornament on to the tree.

So, it s not necessary to do it now, although you could, but when you pull these cookies out of the oven while they are still just a bit soft, you want to cut a very small hole out at the top. That s only if you want to make it into an ornament. So, we will go ahead now and put these in the oven. I have pre-heated it to about 350. They will bake till they are golden brown, say 15 minutes or so, but we will check them for color in 10 to 15 minutes.

So, I pulled our Christmas tree ornament cookies out of the oven and right away if you are planning to make them into an ornament, go ahead and cut yourself a little triangle, a little hole, just something that a string could be strung through, so that you can put it on to your tree. If you wait too long and the cookies get very cool, you are on the risk of cracking them when you try to put a hole through them. So, do it right away when you pull them out of the oven and they are warm.

So, now that we have got our holes poked through the cookies, we are going to let these sit for about a half an hour on the baking sheet. Now, that s really important because you have got these liquid hot candy centers and you really don t want to burn yourself. So, allow these to cool for about a half an hour and then you will be able to put them on your tree or eat them up.

Next, we are going to move on to gingerbread cookies.