Cinnamon spritzgebäck christmas trees with plum heart: a winter forest to nibble on

The butter should be nicely soft, but not liquid. Break the almond baking paste into small pieces, as this distributes it much better, and put it in a bowl with the butter and icing sugar. Beat everything with the hand mixer for about 3 minutes until creamy and no almond bits are visible anymore. This matters, because small lumps would later clog the piping nozzle.

Whisk the egg and weigh out 30 g of it, which is roughly half an egg. Slowly stir it into the butter mixture until it is smooth again. Then mix the flour with the cinnamon and salt and fold everything in briefly with the dough scraper, only until no flour is visible. Don't stir for too long, or the dough becomes tough and hard to pipe.

Now it turns green! Add about 2 drops of green gel colour to the dough and work it in evenly with the dough scraper. Start with a little and add more if needed, as too much colour can't be taken out again. The cinnamon mutes the green a little, which gives a lovely fir tone. Then fit the star tip with 8 mm into a piping bag and fill it no more than halfway with dough. This gives you much more control when piping.

Preheat the oven to 170 °C fan-assisted and line the trays with baking paper. Pipe each tree from top to bottom: start at the tip with a small dot and then move the dough back and forth in a zigzag, making each row slightly wider. The crown should be about 5 cm high and 5 cm wide at the base. For a trunk, pipe a short line of about 2 cm underneath. Because you will later put two trees together, pipe them in pairs: one pair with a trunk, one pair without. You should end up with around 30 trees in total.

Bake the trees for 8 to 10 minutes. They should stay a nice green and must not take on any colour, so keep a close eye on them towards the end of the baking time. Then let them cool completely on the tray. Straight out of the oven they are still very fragile, so please don't touch them yet, even though it's hard to resist!

Temper the Dark couverture: melt two thirds at 45 to 50 °C, add the remaining third and stir until everything is liquid and has cooled to 31 to 32 °C. Then dip the trunk of each tree that has one into the couverture, wipe it off on the edge of the bowl and lay the trees on baking paper. The trees without a trunk stay completely green. Let the chocolate set.

Stir the jam until smooth and fill it into a disposable piping bag. Turn half of the trees over and pipe about 3 g of jam into the middle, a dab roughly the size of a hazelnut. Place the matching second tree on top and press it down very gently. Use slightly less jam rather than more, otherwise it will squeeze out at the edge.

Now it is time to decorate the tree! Use the edible glue to place small dots on the trees, exactly where the baubles would hang on a real fir tree. Press one sugar pearl or sprinkle piece onto each dot. A cooking tweezer or a slightly damp finger makes this easy. For the top, roll out the yellow fondant thinly, cut out small stars with a mini cookie cutter and stick one star onto each tree.

If you're short on time, simply skip the sugar decoration. Dust the filled trees with icing sugar through a fine sieve, holding the sieve a little higher. This way the sugar falls evenly, like freshly fallen snow.