Nutty Spiced Christmas Tree Cookies

So today my mom asked me to make some cookies for her work. I already did the classic gingerbread men last week, so I wanted to make something classy and complex. I completely made this up as I went, so it's going to need a little tweaking to perfect, but I'm very very happy with how they turned out!

The Cookies:

• Pre-Heat oven to 325 Degrees
• 1 Cup White Sugar
• 1 Stick Butter, at room temperature
• 1 Egg
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• 2 Cups All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Teaspoon baking powder
• 1 Pinch Each Nutmeg, Cloves, Ginger, Allspice
• 1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1 Cup Chopped Nuts (I used chopped almonds and pecans)

1. Beat Sugar, Butter, and Egg along with Vanilla until fluffy
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together Dry ingredients until distributed evenly
3. Slowly combine wet and dry ingredients (I used my hands!) until a sticky dough forms. 
4. It's super messy, so I plopped the dough ball onto a piece of wax paper, put another piece of wax paper over it, and rolled it a bit before putting it in the refrigerator to chill. 
5. After it has chilled for about an hour, roll out the dough (with waxed paper still on top!) and cut into whatever shapes you want. I used Christmas trees, as you can see above. 
6. Bake at 325* until edges are beginning to brown and the top is turning gold. It took these trees about 15 minutes, but they were pretty big so be sure to start checking on yours once eight to ten minutes is up!
7. Remove and chill completely before frosting. 

The Royal Icing

• 2 Cups Confectioner's sugar
• 1 teaspoon meringue powder
• 1 tablespoon Maple Syrup (natural is much better than artificial!)
• 1/2 Cup Water (you will NOT use all of this!)

1. Put 1 1/2 Cups of the Powdered sugar and the meringue powder in a medium bowl. Add the Tablespoon of Maple Syrup.
2. This is where it gets tricky-maple syrups of different brands have different consistencies. You'll have to figure out how much extra water and powdered sugar to add to get the right mix. I would start with one teaspoon of water added along with 1/4 Cup Powdered sugar. The end result should be something like the consistency of toothpaste, maybe a little looser. It needs to be stiff enough not to run all over the cookie and to hold a drizzle shape, but it isn't going to be as thick and stiff as regular cake icing.
3. Smear 1/2 Each cookie with the icing, and press down chopped nuts onto the frosting. 
4. On the other half of the cookie, you can use a decorating bag with a small tip (I actually just used a small zip-lock bag with tiny tip of one corner cut off) to drizzle some icing or put any design you want.
5. I finished my cookies off with a sprinkle of cinnamon for extra spice, but this is optional! 

Enjoy!