Christmas Trees and Snowballs

Cake pop mass and preparation:

1. First, a cake base must be made from biscuit dough. Its total weight is about 670 g. You could of course – if there are any left over from the Christmas bakery – use cake scraps with the above weight, as long as they only consist of unfilled, soft bottom. Any number of shapes can be made from the later mass. In larger quantities, you can process them bit by bit – again and again with cooling. It can be shaped like putty, it is still a bit damp at first, but the figures keep their shape through subsequent drying.
2. For the cake base, line a 26-inch cake tin on the base with baking paper and lightly grease the edge. Preheat the oven to 175 °. Separate the eggs. Beat the egg whites until stiff and keep them ready. Beat the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla sugar until whitish and frothy. Sift in the flour in several steps and fold in. When it is used up, fold in the egg whites, pour the dough into the mold and place it in the oven on the 2nd rail from the bottom. The baking time is 30 – 40 minutes. Make a wooden stick test. The dough must no longer adhere when it is pulled out. After baking, let the cake cool down completely.
3. In the meantime, mix the mascarpone, quark and vanilla sugar together well. Whip the cream until stiff and fold in. Then crumble the cooled cake base as finely as possible, place in a large bowl, pour the amaretto over it and mix everything together well. Then add the mascarpone quark mass and mix and knead everything thoroughly with your hands. Then transfer the mixture to a small bowl, cover it with cling film and put it in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours (overnight would be ideal).
4. For the further processing of the trees and balls specified here, it must be halved. If you want to shape other figures out of it, you have to calculate the required portions yourself.

Making the trees:

1. Preheat the oven to 150 °. Cut off enough of the dough with a teaspoon that you can form a ball 3.5 cm in diameter. This is placed on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and then pressed together several times and all around with your thumb and forefinger so that a slight point at the top and slight waves and uneven indentations arise all around. Similar to a real sapling. When you have finished making the snowballs, put them on the baking tray and put it in the oven for 15 minutes. Then let the trees and balls cool down a little. Place the trees on a grid and leave the balls on the tray (for more information, see how to prepare balls).
2. While doing this, mix the cast for the trees and color it green. Have all the decorative pearls you want ready. They must always be applied immediately after the casting has been applied, otherwise they will not adhere (the casting quickly forms a skin on the surface). So that means always painting and decorating a tree. Then the next one, etc. Then let it dry well.

Making the snowballs:

1. Shape the dough into 2.5 – 3 cm large shapes, roll them immediately in the coconut flakes and place them on the baking tray with the trees. Dry season see trees. Then dust the baking sheet with a thick layer of powdered sugar, roll it back and forth and dust again. You should be well covered with it.
2. The number of people mentioned above relates to a base weight of approx. 1500 g. It resulted in 32 small snowballs and 14 trees measuring 3.5 x 5 cm.
3. The production is a bit time-consuming, but a bit of handicraft fun and an eye-catcher on the cookie plate … 😉

Addendum:

1. Please store trees and balls in a dry place in an unlocked container and at room temperature. They are more likely to be eaten soon.