Yesterday I told you about making Stained Glass Ornament Cookies. Today I thought you might be interested in seeing what I did with them. I added them to what I refer to as "The Edible Tree" in the dining room (bear in mind here, that it's the ornaments and not the tree that are edible). The tree rests on the sideboard in the room where we have our big holiday dinners, usually before a blazing fire in the Franklin Stove. Some years it is so Norman Rockwell that I could die. This tree grew more out of desperation than inspiration. Our 119-year-old house has a basement that is only accessible from the outside (and down a steep flight of steps). Last year when the weather turned bad on tree decorating day I decided to leave the ornaments stored in the basement and head to the pantry to see what I could come up with. I grabbed Christmas peeps, bell-shaped gumdrops, and candy canes. Then I got to work baking cookies, poking holes in them before baking so I could string them with gold cord in order to add them to the tree. I ended up with a unique tree that everyone loved. This year, instead of the chocolate chip cookies, I made the gingerbread cookies shaped like ornaments. To hang the candies I ran them through with ornament hooks and hung them on the tree. The little ones in your family will be dazzled by a tree like this, but do take the edible ornaments down yourself and remove the hooks before giving them to small children. You don't want over zealousness to lead to injury! Clearly everything on the tree is not edible. The lights, red glass ball ornaments, and garland is not, but the majority is, and with each passing year I come up with more ideas. The beauty of this tree is that when the season is over there is very little to put away.
I encourage you to come up with your own special baking or decorating ideas this year and make them a treasured memory for you and your family. This is how traditions begin.
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