Christmastree

The classic festive outline: a stepped conifer with tiers narrowing to a point and the small trunk block at the base that stops the shape reading as an arrowhead. It is the cutter that comes out of the tin first every December and gets used more than anything else in it. Roll the dough, press once, and you have the shape that carries all the decoration afterwards, whether that is royal icing piped in swags, a dusting of sugar, silver balls, or nothing at all beyond a plain spiced edge. It works equally well for shortbread and sugar cookies, and for fondant and modelling paste when the decorating gets more ambitious. A single file, so there is nothing to assemble. It is the sort of cutter that gets handed round a kitchen full of children and comes back covered in flour every year.