How to Make Geometric Christmas Cookies

Recently, I got a chance to try out the Nestle Toll House Rolled and Ready Cookie Dough as a part of a sponsored campaign. I'm so thrilled I did, because they are pretty much my new favorite thing!

I really love making cookies at Christmas. I have this one time consuming recipe for sugar cookies that I try to make each year, but it ends out taking forever, and lately I just don't have the time. So when I saw these Nestle Toll House Rolled and Ready Cookie Dough, I knew they would be perfect for me. You get to have all of the fun and deliciousness or freshly baked homemade cookies right out of the oven without using mixing bowls, measuring cups, a rolling pin, etc... I even made all of these cookies without using a cookie cutter at all. Then I topped them with royal icing (the kind that hardens) and large sprinkles.

You can use cookie cutters with these fun cookie sheets and decorate them with your kids. However, they are also really fun for creating cool cookies really quickly. I'll show you how I made these geometric Christmas tree cookies and these letters without a cookie cutter at all.

What you need:
1. Nestle Toll House Rolled and Ready Cookie Dough
2. A knife or pizza cutter
3. Royal icing (meringue powder, powdered sugar, water)
4. A Ziploc bag
5. Giant sprinkles

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven according to the instructions. Take out a sheet of already rolled cookie dough.

2. To make the geometric Christmas trees, use a pizza cutter or just a plain kitchen knife to cut the sheet in half, and then to start cutting it into lots of triangles. Because the cookies tend to spread out a little, I ended out making the triangles below into little mountains, and used slightly narrower triangles to make the geometric Christmas trees.

3. Spread out the cookies so they aren't too close together, then bake according to the instructions.

*To make the letters, use a toothpick to lightly sketch out the shape of the letters you want on top of a sheet of cookie dough. Make them a little bit narrower than you want because they will spread out. Then cut out the letters with a regular old kitchen knife.

4. Decorate the cookies with royal icing and large sprinkles (I found the meringue powder and sprinkles in the baking aisle of the craft store.)

Tips for working with Royal Icing

Royal icing is one of my favorite things. I love how the icing hardens into a crispy candy shell. There's a way to make it with egg whites, but I just like to use meringue powder because it's really easy. It's a little hard to work with though because it will start to dry almost immediately. Here's a few tips on working with it:

1. When you are first following the recipe to make royal icing, use a little less water than the directions call for. Then add in more water slowly until you are happy with the thickness. If you add too much water, you have to add a TON more powdered sugar to even things out.

2. You can buy all sorts of special cookie and cake decorating tools, but if you don't have any, you can just use a Ziploc bag. Pour some royal icing in the plastic bag, and make sure it's sealed. Then cut a very tiny hole in one of the corners. Now you can squeeze the icing out as you decorate.

3. If you want to fill in areas of a cookie (like the LYLA letters above), first start by doing the outline. Let it dry just a little bit for a minute or two, then fill in the middle area.

4. It will take a few hours (maybe overnight) for the icing to fully dry into that crispy candy shell. However, the top layer dries pretty quickly, so add the sprinkles pretty quickly if you want them to stick.