I love Christmas cookies decorated with royal icing but they’re an absolute pain to make.   You have to mix up several batches of icing for all the different colors you want, fit multiple pastry bags with tips, and then carefully fill each bag with icing.  All that before you even start decorating!  It’s very time consuming and the clean up is no fun either.  Raspberry Filled Christmas Tree Cookies are much less work but no less beautiful.  The idea for these cookies comes from the The New York Times. Their recipe calls for a linzer cookie dough but I opted for a classic sugar cookie dough because I thought the paler color of the dough would highlight the red raspberry jam better. Plus, I already had a batch of sugar cookie dough in my freezer just waiting to be transformed into Yuletide goodness! (more…)