Note: This Pumpkin Trees recipe was originally part of my Biscuit Advent Calendar, a one-recipe-a-day email series in December. You can find the other recipes and sign up for the next round if you want here.

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I realise this one might feel a little left-field (unless you are Austrian). But it’s also far too good to leave out. And just to be clear: I very much hope nobody is under the impression that you’re meant to bake one biscuit from this calendar every day. That sounds exhausting. Think of this as biscuit window-shopping as much as instructions. (I, for one, love browsing cookbooks purely for the pleasure of it.)

Like I’ve said before, I love classical techniques and flavours. I also tend to stay on the natural side and avoid food colouring (I make an exception for sprinkles and my children’s desire for colour).

That said, I do like to add something new every year. This recipe is very traditional in technique, but it uses a rather unusual main ingredient: pumpkin seeds.

Pumpkin Seeds
Pumpkin seeds and especially the Styrian ones which are quite famous in Germany and Austria are wonderful for two reasons. They have a robust, slightly bitter flavour that balances the sweetness of traditional Christmas baking beautifully. And they turn your dough a surprisingly vibrant green. In fact, greener than pistachios ever would. Which makes them perfect for Christmas trees. No food colouring required.

In this recipe, I’ve used both the seeds and the oil. If you’ve never tried pumpkin seed oil before, I highly recommend seeking it out if you can. It’s not dissimilar to pistachio in its earthy complexity and works surprisingly well in sweet recipes (even drizzled over vanilla ice cream), while being just as delicious as a salad dressing. You can still bake the biscuits without the oil, just leave it out.

(By the way, green is notoriously difficult to photograph well. The human eye is extremely good at distinguishing subtle shades of green (likely to be good at telling young/ripe/generally edible plants apart). Cameras and screens, however, are much less nuanced in this range, and most digital colour spaces can’t reproduce all the greens we’re able to see. As a result, greens often look flatter, duller, or simply different in photos than they do in real life.)

Filling
I also sandwiched these with a white chocolate and condensed milk filling, which is really not necessary but I want to show you this type of filling because it is very versatile. In this instance, I flavored it with pumpkin seed oil.

But I also once went on an entire ‘hot drinks in biscuit form’ tangent with it:

• coffee (like a Vietnamese coffee)
• salted caramel (with dulce de leche)
• golden milk (with turmeric)
• chai latte (with chai spices)

Basically any hot drink that comes with milk is ideal to emulate. Matcha would also work great (speaking of green). And you can add the same spices to the shortbread that you are filling. If you are curious and don’t know how to go about it I am happy to give a detailed recipe but experimenting is also fun.

Here dulce de leche/coffee on the left and golden milk (they are really that yellow, turmeric in everything) on the right.

And while we are on the topic of fillings: if you want to fill your biscuits with a commercial spread, be it Biscoff (cinnamon biscuit), Nutella or even pistachio spread (I abstain from making Dubai chocolate biscuits this year but you could): melting in some chocolate (white or dark, depending on flavour) will give you a filling that firms up nicely inside a biscuit. That gives you quite a bit of creative freedom.

So let’s get on to the recipe. Never mind if you don’t have tree cookie cutters. Any other shape also works of course.

Enjoy!!