CHRISTMAS TREE SPINACH DIP APPETIZER
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Christmas Tree Spinach Dip Appetizer – This is the perfect appetizer for your holiday gathering. Bread is filled with spinach and cheese, formed into a Christmas tree shape, and cut into ‘branches’ for an easy pull-apart breadstick.
These Christmas tree breadsticks are a perfect appetizer for your holiday dinner parties. It’s filled with spinach cheese dip and is absolutely delectable. When you want to make something festive yet easy for your Christmas party, this is your recipe.
And, if you need something sweet for gifting or a party, everyone loves Christmas snack platter, pretzel crack, and Bugle snack mix.
CHRISTMAS TREE SPINACH DIP APPETIZER
For this appetizer recipe, you’ll start with making a very easy yeast dough. In addition, if you’re new to cooking with yeast, check out my informational posts Tips for Baking with Yeast.
This is a very easy recipe using basic bread ingredients of flour, olive oil, sugar, water, yeast, and salt. However, if you’re a fan of my Easy Bread recipe or my Easy Pizza Dough, you can certainly use it.
Furthermore, if you don’t enjoy making bread just grab two tubes of refrigerated pizza dough from your local grocer. You can use either the thin pizza dough or regular. It’s totally up to you.
Heck, if you want to you can even purchase spinach dip for this recipe!
NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS
You can actually make this recipe any season. You don’t have to shape it into a Christmas tree. Cute your dough into an egg for Easter, a heart, a box, a circle, or a football for the big game.
You can even simply cut two squares then make long twisted breadsticks.
As well, children can twist the bread. Oh and how about they shape the breadsticks into their initials? How fun would that be for them?
TIPS FOR SPINACH DIP CHRISTMAS TREE
- First, I start with making the dough. while it’s resting you can mix together the spinach mixture.
- Next, you’ll roll out the dough and cut it into triangles.
- Spread the spinach mixture over the base triangle and top with the smaller two.
- Finally, the fun part, cut the branches and twist them so that the spinach shows through.
SHOP THIS POST
- The easiest way I’ve found to cut the branches is with this pizza cutter.
- Cheese grater
- Love a mixing bowl with a handle and a spout
- Sheet pans
- Parchment paper
If you don’t like spinach, you can omit it.
You can also put sliced pepperoni on the top like Christmas balls and offer marinara sauce for dipping.
More recipes you’ll enjoy
- Two Pesto Chicken Pizza
- Ranch Sauce Pizza with Chicken and Bacon
- Caramelized Onion Butternut Squash Pesto Pizza
- From-Scratch Soft Pretzels
- Easy Bread Focaccia
CHRISTMAS TREE SPINACH DIP APPETIZER
Items in blue & underlined below can be clicked for more detail or to purchase.
Ingredients
FOR BREAD BASE:
- 1 and ½ cups (200gms) all-purpose flour
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- ½ Tablespoon granulated sugar
- ¾ cup warm water
- 1 teaspoon dry yeast
- ¾ teaspoon salt
FOR SPINACH CHEESE FILLING:
- 2 and ½ cup spinach Blanched & finely chopped
- ¾ cup cream cheese softened
- 2-3 medium garlic clove minced
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
- ½ cup parmesan cheese grated
- ½ cup cheddar cheese grated, OR mozzarella
Instructions
FOR BREAD BASE:
- Preheat your oven to 180°C or 350°F.
- In a bowl, add water, yeast, and sugar. Mix well and keep aside for 3-4 minutes or until you see bubbles on top.
- In a large bowl, add all-purpose flour and salt. Mix well.
- Add olive oil to the yeast mixture, then add this mixture to the flour mixture and knead soft dough. (Don’t knead for too long just mix everything well. Keep the dough in a warm and draft-free place, like your oven or microwave, for 60-90 minutes to rise.)
- In a bowl, mix together the spinach mixture, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, cheddar/ mozzarella cheese, Italian seasoning, black pepper, minced garlic, and salt.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TREE:
- Roll out the bread dough on a parchment paper-lined baking tray; about 1/4th inch thick.
- Using a pizza cutter, cut the crust in a shape of a Christmas tree as shown in the photos. This will provide you with one large triangle (this will be your base) and two small ones (these will be the top). Transfer the two smaller triangles to another tray lined with parchment paper.
- Spread the spinach cheese dip on the large triangle evenly
- Top the spinach dip-lined triangle with the two small ones. You might have to stretch or tuck the dough a little to perfectly cover the base.
- Using a pizza cutter, cut 1-inch thick slices from the middle of the tree to the edge leaving a small space in between. Leave more space in the middle as you move to the bottom. (Check the photo for reference)
- Gently twist each slice (or branch) to form a tree shape. The top slice will be shorter, so you just have to give it a half or one twist; as you go down to the longer slices you would have to give them two or three twists.
- Bake for about 25-30 minutes until golden brown on top and cooked perfectly on the bottom.
- If you want you can sprinkle grated mozzarella cheese on the tree before putting it into the oven; and brush butter and garlic mixture on top after baking.
- Serve warm
Nutrition
Nutritional information given is an automatic calculation and can vary based on the exact products you use and changes you make to the recipe. If these numbers are important to you, I recommend calculating them yourself.
I used the canned pizza dough, thin crust and the store-bought spinach dip and it was a hit and delicious. So easy to make and so cute! I will keep this recipe
How far in advance could i assemble this before baking?
You can make it 8 hours in advance, cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it. When you’re ready to cook set it out 30 minutes before baking.
Thank you so much for sharing this amazing spinach dip appetizer recipe! Will surely have this again! It’s really easy to make and it tasted so delicious! Highly recommended!
This spinach dip was delish and so pretty as a Christmas tree shaped appetizer! Yum.
How stunning! This will be the perfect Christmas Eve centerpiece. My family will love it.