These Christmas wreath cookies are so gorgeous you almost won’t want to eat them, but the sugar cookie base and vanilla flavored royal icing means that you should! Deck the halls with these festive cookies.
When it comes to Christmas cookies, we often opt for a 2D option that lies a bit flat, and while there are tons of pretty designs to be made, I wanted to go for a more dynamic version with a 3D effect for these Christmas wreaths.
I did use a leaf tip for these, but if you don’t have tips, you could always decorate the wreaths in a normal royal icing fashion like I did for these snowflake cookies and these gingerbread cookies.
Add in other wreath desserts like marshmallow Christmas wreath desserts for a wonderful Christmas spread.
In this decorated Christmas wreath cookie tutorial, I’ll teach you how to make Christmas wreath cookies, how to decorate Christmas wreath cookies, and how to make the royal icing for the cookies.
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These Christmas wreath cookies are:
- easy to make, while looking impressive
- delicious and moist without falling apart
- colorful and great for Christmas parties
- perfect for adding edible decorations to like edible silver pearls
Must-Have Baking Tools (seriously)
- Silicone baking mats – I use this brand and my cookies slide right off without burning!
- a cookie scoop – get this one. It makes the perfect rounded cookies every time!
- silicone spatula – try this set. It’s the best way to get the most out of your dough and batters
- rolling pin guides – I use this one. Genius way to roll your dough out evenly!
How to Make the Dough for Christmas Wreath Cookies
These Christmas wreath cookies use a cut-out sugar cookie dough, which is essential as you don’t want the dough to spread in the oven.
The combination of ingredients and the amount of time you chill the dough for is what prevents it from becoming blobs all in your oven, so follow it to the letter!
When you go to cut out the shape, put a little bit of flour on your cutter and make sure not to pull at the dough too much as you take it out as this could result in cookies that get wonky in the oven even if you can’t see it when you put them in.
And let me just repeat: follow all of the instructions for chilling the dough.
I have tried multiple ways to skip these steps for the sake of time, and really you won’t get the crisp edges you want without following them.
How to Make the Royal Icing for Christmas Wreath Cookies
Royal icing is used to decorate these wreath cookies, and you can use my royal icing recipe to make sure you’ve got all of the ingredients including meringue powder.
I use meringue powder as I find it easier to store and it’s safe to eat for pregnant women.
Now, typically, when you go to make royal icing, you are looking at making a consistency that is somewhere between 12 and 15 seconds, which is the time it takes for a line to disappear from your icing if you drag a knife through it.
This helps you get that icing smooth on your cookie, and simply requires you to keep mixing the icing until it stiffens up to the consistency you want it at (or you can add a bit of water to thin it out).
However, for these Christmas wreath cookies, we’re going to use a piping tip to make leaves, and this means that you don’t want your icing to droop or lose its shape.
For that reason, we are going to want stiff royal icing, which means that if you draw a line in it, it’s staying forever!
The key to this, for me, is to gradually add more powdered sugar until it’s stiff enough.
Start with the basic recipe, and and gradually add more after a couple minutes, and then a bit more in a few more minutes, etc.
You should still be able to pipe it out of the piping bag, but it should stay in a leaf shape when you do.
Test it first beore using on the cookies.
Extra Tools You’ll Need for Christmas Wreath Cookies
In addition to the regular ingredients you’ll need to make the dough and icing, you’ll also want some extra tools like:
- piping bags – these are the best kind
- a leaf tip for the piping bag – I use this one
- green food coloring – gel food coloring is always better than liquid food coloring for this
- baking tray
- silicone baking mat – this is the best one
- a scribe or toothpick to fix any details
- edible silver balls – I use these
- wreath cookie cutter – this is the best one
Can I Substitute Ingredients in these Christmas Wreath Cookies
These cookies are formulated to be perfectly no spread, and unlike other cookies where the shape doesn’t matter, the shape matters immensely!
I wouldn’t recommend any substitutions, as you may throw off the balance of the recipe, but if you’re hoping to make a keto cookie or a vegan cookie or something similar, use a recipe that is specifically formulated for that purpose and then use these instructions for decorating.
Must-Have Decorating Tools
- Piping bags – I use and love these ones
- Gel food coloring – much better than liquid food coloring
- Meringue powder – I use this kind for my royal icing
- Scribe – for awesome detail and clean up
How to Decorate Christmas Wreath Cookies
The key to these cookies is all in the decoration.
Once you’ve let the cookies cool off completely, use two colors of green icing (or just one if you prefer), and, using a leaf tip on your piping bag, start from the outside of the wreath and pipe leaves all the way along the outside, so you’ll basically pull the piping bag further away from the wreath.
Because the icing should set very quicky due to how stiff it is, you can pretty much immediately then go a bit into the circle and repeat the same, creating circles of leaves that overlap each other until you get to the very center.
Now, you can do this with a larger leaf tip and a smaller leaf tip, alternating.
You can do it with one color and one size leaf tip all the way around, or you could do it with two colors of the same size leaves.
This is up to you and what you have on hand.
I like the look adding the smaller leaf in there, but it’s not necessary.
Once this is dry, I found that it added a bit of extra fun to go in with 3 dots of red royal icing, but again, it’s not required.
Add garland, add silver bells, add whatever you want to get creative with these Christmas wreath cookies.
One thing to be careful of is not breaking the ends of the leaves off when it dries, so handle with caution!
These pictures show that I have flooded and outlined the base of the cookie in green, but this is also not required and you can get a really sophisticated look without it.
Finally, use red icing to add a bow on top and add a bit of a silver bell and there you go!
Festive Christmas cookies with an extra bit of pizazz!
Decorated Christmas Wreath Cookies
These decorated Christmas wreaths are festive and fun and use royal icing and sugar cookies for a tasty cookie.
Ingredients
- 24 cookies using cut-out sugar cookie dough
- 1 batch of royal icing, separated in the colors you want to decorate
Instructions
- Bake the Christmas wreath cookies using the sugar cut-out cookie recipe
- Make a batch of royal icing using the royal icing recipe
- Separate out the royal icing into as many colors as you want to decorate with and put into piping bags
- Using a leaf tip, pipe leaves around the outside of the wreath all the way around.
- Wait 15 minutes, and pipe leaves in another circle, continuining inward.
- Keep piping circles of leaves until you've filled the whole wreath.
- Wait 30 minutes and pipe a bow using two loops.
- Add a silver pearl in the center of the bow.
- Using red icing, pipe 3 small dots as berries in random spots around the wreath.
- Let dry for 12 hours
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