How NOT to make Christmas Tree Cookies

I was planning on doing a cutesy tutorial today on baking these precious little Christmas Tree cookies from this month's Parent's Magazine. Adorable, right?!

As you may have read in a previous post, I had a MAJOR issue with an article in the December issue of Parent's magazine so I tossed mine but not before ripping out 2 pages of cookie recipes. After trying them, I've decided I should have just tossed the WHOLE magazine! haha

So here goes my how NOT to make Christmas Tree Cookies Tutorial!

I should preface this with the recipe calls to make your own dough BUT since I did this during little man's nap time, I skipped that part and went straight for Pillbury. Let's be honest, they taste better anyways.

I rolled out the dough, using an expired can of evaporated milk covered in flour (I don't own a rolling pin) which is JUST as effective as a rolling pin and it makes me feel better that I didn't completely waste the can... it came in handy for something before tossing it! I used my tree cookie cutter and cut the trees.

See all the left over dough? You're supposed to gather it, re-roll it and use the cutter to cut more... that didn't always happen ;)

Then, I placed them on the cookie sheet and used a straw to "hole punch" a few dots to insert your "ornaments" into.  I then sucked the dough out if the straw and ate it. It was awesome. Bake for 5 minutes at 350.

Pull them out of the oven and insert your crushed jolly ranchers into the holes. How do you crush jolly ranchers? Good question! It's hard as h-e- double hockey sticks. I found 2 methods that eventually, when combined, worked. First, you triple bag your unwrapped jolly ranchers (after eating all of the watermelon ones). Then place them behind the wheel of your tire and drive your car back and forth over them. Seriously. Why do we eat these things? They can't be good for our tummies if I have to drive over them with my car. THEN, to crush them smaller, take a hammer or rubber mallet and whack them a bunch of times.  Now that you've spent 30 minutes crushing jolly ranchers, insert them into the holes of your cookies.

WAIT! What holes? That's right... the holes close when you bake them. SO... remake holes with your straw. Eat all of the cookie that gets sucked up into the straw, of course. THEN, place your crushed jolly ranchers in the holes.

This batch came out TERRIBLE SOOO... for batch number 2, I made the holes BIGGER!

Here is the end result....

So close, yet so far away from what they were SUPPOSED to look like:

In addition to looking terrible, I figured, hey, they're still going to taste delicious right? WRONG. They taste like a jolly rancher that you found in the bottom of a purse you never use and can't remember how it got there but you eat anyways regardless that you ate half the wrapper too because you couldn't peel it off... mixed with sugar cookie.

EPIC CHRISTMAS COOKIE FAILURE.

Batch #3 was adorned with M&Ms.

SOOO.... After 1 hour, a kitchen covered in flour and running my car over jolly ranchers.... I yielded a whopping 6 sugar cookie with M&M cookies. haha. At LEAST I did a test run for my Thanksgiving dessert or I'd be making a run to Harris Teeter on Thanksgiving for some Elfudges (which probably taste better than these anyways!)

Despite all of this... my Christmas baking spirits are not shattered! I still plan to attempt Rudolf the red nose reindeer cookies and peppermint cheesecake. Now if these fail.... I'll forever be the girl that brings the veggie plate and ranch dip!