Cheese Twist Christmas Tree
Wow the guests at your next holiday party with this delicious, pull-apart Christmas tree appetizer. The combination of crispy, buttery, flaky puff pastry wrapped around cheese and pesto is a stellar combination. Serve as-is or alongside some spicy tomato sauce for dipping.
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Recipe Summary
Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, How Delicious Are Thy Branches
When it comes to party-friendly food, there are few things as easy and delicious as crispy, cheesy, puff pastry-based bread sticks. Not only can this versatile snack be made with all sorts of different cheeses, sauces, and dips, but as you see here, it can be made into the shape of a Christmas tree.
One of the huge keys here is finding a decent frozen puff pasty, made with real butter. I'm not a huge read the label guy, but this time we really do want to check. If butter isn't one of the main ingredients, find another option, or make your own, using the dough recipe from our croissant video.
The other just-as-important tip is to make sure you cook your "tree" long enough. I like to bake it as long as I can, and get it as browned and crisp as possible, so as to avoid the dreaded undercooked puff pastry, which is, culinarily speaking, one of the saddest things ever. When it doubt, give it another few minutes. Besides a quality pastry, and a long enough bake, not much can go wrong, and I really do hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!
Ingredients
Directions
Chef's Notes:
I used Dufour puff pastry.
The pesto is technically optional… you can just make this with cheese. Or you can use tomato-based or pepper-based sauces.
You can use any other cheese you like instead of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
If you want to decorate this further, you could add bits of red pepper to look like ornaments or slivers of anchovies to look like tinsel.