I created this edible gratitude tree for a Mabon recipe/craft for my September article in Witchology magazine. It is a wonderful publication, and I am very excited to be a contributor! Each issue is full of great articles and beautiful photography, so I encourage all my witchy readers to check it out!
A big part of celebrating Mabon for my family is expressing our gratitude for all of our blessings. Last year we made a gratitude tree with fabric leaves, and it turned out really well. We put some branches in a vase, then each day from September 1st until Mabon, we wrote something for which we were grateful on a leaf and added it to a branch. This is what it looked like on Mabon:
For my article, my mom and I made an edible version with shortbread cookies shaped like leaves. We started out the same as before with putting branches in a vase, then made shortbread cookies and cut them out with a 3 1/2 inch-long leaf-shaped cookie cutter.
I used my pecan shortbread cookie recipe, except that I increased the flour to 510 g (4 c) and I left the pecans out. These changes were to make the dough stiff enough to cut into shapes and to make sure the edges of the cookies stayed sharp (nuts would have made cutting them out difficult). Note: you can also use regular all-purpose wheat flour in the cookie recipe if you are not gluten free.
Make the cookie dough then divide it into two pieces. Place each piece onto plastic wrap, flatten the dough into a disk about an inch thick, and wrap well. Refrigerate for at least two hours and up to overnight.
Once your cookie dough has chilled, preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove one piece of dough from the fridge and roll it out between two pieces of waxed paper to 3/8 inch thick. Cut the dough with a 3.5” long leaf-shaped cookie cutter and place the leaves on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Make a 1/4″ wide hole in each cookie before baking. This will make it possible to hang the leaves on your tree:
Bake for 15 to 17 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until the cookies are golden brown on the edges. Cool on the pan for 10 minutes and then transfer to a rack to cool completely. Repeat with the second piece of dough. I got 33 leaves from the two pieces of dough without using the scraps and that was enough cookies to fill our branches. So, I saved the scraps of dough to use later. You may want to gather the scraps and roll them out again, however, if you want more leaves or if you want some backup cookies in case any break.
I used my friend Gretchen’s vegan royal icing recipe from her amazing blog, Gretchen’s Vegan Bakery! Scroll down on the linked post to get to the icing recipe. One batch of the icing is enough to decorate a full batch of leaf cookies.
While your cookies are cooling, make the vegan royal icing. Note: be sure your water is only warm and not hot or the egg replacer will clump up.
Add some of the icing to a shallow bowl that is wide enough to fit a cookie. Add a drop of coloring at a time until the icing is the color you want.
Dip one cookie at a time, holding it upside down and dipping the top in the icing. Place the cookie right side up on a rack to dry.
You can get a really nice swirled effect by adding a contrasting drop of color to the top of your icing and spreading it around a bit:
Here are our iced cookies:
When you have finished icing all of your cookies, add cocoa powder to the rest of the icing to make it brown for piping the words onto the cookies. You can also add some additional powdered sugar to make it a bit stiffer if need be. You don’t want it too thick to pipe easily, but it needs to be a little thicker than is ideal for dipping so the letters don’t spread out.
Add the brown icing to a piping bag with a fine tip. When the icing on the leaves is completely dry, pipe something for which you are grateful onto each leaf:
While you wait for the piping to dry, arrange some branches in a vase:
Use an ornament hook to hang each cookie on a branch. Twist the ends of the hook around the branch as shown:
Here is our finished cookie gratitude tree!
There are lots more Mabon recipes and craft ideas here on Vegan Kitchen Magick! Also, here is my Mabon music playlist that my mom and I listened to while we made our gratitude tree:
Blessed Mabon!