Old School Sugar Cookies Become New School Holiday Cookie Wreath – Smart & Final #ChooseSmart

It’s that time of year when holiday baking goes into full throttle at our house!  I remember baking cookies and decorating with my mom growing up.  We would mix the cookie dough and then cut them into different shapes and decorate them with sprinkles.  Then we’d bake them and the sprinkles would melt.  That was about the extent of our holiday cookie decorating.

Now that I have my own family, I have started new traditions and altered some of those family recipes that have been passed down over the years.  This year, I decided that I wanted to create a Holiday Wreath with our traditional sugar cookies.  I would still be using the recipe (less the food coloring and sprinkles) and adding some of my very own personal touches to it!  To get started, I headed down to our local Smart & Final to pick up some of the baking ingredients I needed for the recipe.

Ingredients I picked up at Smart & Final included flour, sugar, vanilla, baking powder, and butter.  While I was there, I discovered an awesome promotion where you get a $13 Hollywood Movie Money Certificate to see Parental Guidance if you buy any two of the participating items.  Sweet!  This included my sugar, vanilla and a few other products.  Note that there is only one certificate per purchase of two qualifying items and only one movie money certificate per person.

When I got home, I immediately redeemed my $13.00 Hollywood Movie Money voucher with the code located at the bottom of my Smart & Final receipt.  All it asked for was the code found on my receipt, my first and last name, email address, and mailing address and voila!  The Hollywood Movie Money Certificate was on its way to being processed.  How cool is that??  Now I had a movie pass to see Parental Guidance and the ingredients I needed to make a Holiday Cookie Wreath.

Making the Holiday Wreath was easy and fun!  With a couple pairs of hands, some green colored frosting and some creativity, we had a beautiful Holiday Cookie Wreath before we knew it.  Follow these simple steps and you can make your own Holiday Cookie Wreath!

HOLIDAY COOKIE WREATH

– 1 batch homemade sugar cookies
– 1 recipe royal icing
– 1 can of green frosting (or vanilla tinted with green coloring)
– 1 piece of red fruit leather
– Candy bits, such as jelly beans, red hots, or red M&Ms

PREPARING THE SUGAR COOKIES

– 2/3 cup butter
– 3/4 cup sugar
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 1 egg
– 1 teaspoon vanilla
– 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

DIRECTIONS FOR SUGAR COOKIES

1.  Beat butter on medium speed for 30 seconds.

2.  Add in the vanilla, egg, sugar and baking powder.  Beat until mixture is creamy.

3.  Add flour and beat in as much as you can.  Mix the rest of the flour with a wooden spoon or your hands.

4.  Divide the dough in half.  Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 to 3 hours.

5.  Lightly flour a surface and roll the dough out.  Using biscuit cutters, cut circles from the cookie dough.

6.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake in a 375° oven for 6 to 7 minutes or until edges are firm.  Cool on a rack.

DIRECTIONS FOR HOLIDAY COOKIE WREATH

1. Prepare the cookies according to the sugar cookie recipe above.

2.  Once cool, arrange in a circle (edge to edge) to form a wreath.  Adhere the cookies together by squeezing a small amount of royal icing (or other icing, but let harden so glue like effect happens) between the edges.

3. Decorate the wreath with green frosting (via a featherweight decorating bag with coupler and star tip)

4. Repeat until the wreath is covered with stars.

5. For the bow, take a piece of fruit leather and cut into three strips. Cut one more strip that is one-fourth as long. Make the loops of the bow by folding two of the longer strips in half.

6. Next, take the shorter strip and wrap it around the center of the bow loops, tucking in the ends.

7. Fold the final strip in half at the center and cut the edges in a swallow tail to create the tail of the bow.

8. Gently place this piece on the top of the wreath. Then add your bow.

9. Decorate the wreath with candy bits, like jelly beans, red hots or red M&Ms.

10. Eat and enjoy with family and friends!  Plus this is GREAT at Holiday Cookie Exchanges!!!

I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Smart & Final #CBias  #SocialFabric
All opinions expressed in this post are 100% mine.

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Cookie Wreath