Ready for the Christmas Holidays? Let’s start with the appetizers with this recipe for Christmas Trees with sandwich bread with tuna sauce and arugula! Perfect also for a quick aperitif with friends or family, they are prepared in a few minutes and are no-bake!
We will prepare the tuna sauce with ricotta for more consistency, we will create Christmas Tree sandwiches using cookie cutters and finally create the magic by assembling this appetizer. The final touch is the cheese star also made with the smallest cutter.
Do not be fooled by the Tree shape because these Tree sandwiches are made with 4 star cutters of different sizes. If you want to buy them, I leave you the link here. The cutters I indicated for a potential purchase are made of steel which I think are perfect, they wash easily and steel definitely has a longer life than the plastic ones you see in the video recipe below.
Are you ready to start? Just a few steps and the recipe is served! I also made the video recipe with step by step to show you all the steps of this preparation. Maybe I love Christmas and every year I always try to find new recipes to share with you but I have to admit that I realized that simplicity often pays more. These stuffed Tree sandwiches are easy to make and at the same time super cute, an everlasting symbol of Christmas like the Tree to also bring to the table.
Below I also leave you other recipes that you can prepare during the holiday season, from sweet recipes to savory recipes. We might start with the savory Christmas Trees, always made with sandwich bread, from last year. Or choose the Savory Christmas Tree Cake with speck, cherry tomatoes and olives that I made a few days ago as a new Christmas recipe of this year.
Then you’ll find some Christmas sweets like the Christmas Tree Cakes with rice flour, the Christmas Cookies with shortcrust pastry without butter with Cinnamon with video recipe. Finally, last year’s most loved breakfast: the Christmas French Toast created with Pandoro and berries.
Every link is clickable and will take you directly to the recipe you’ve chosen to read. I remind you that I’m waiting for you every morning in the group and on the Facebook fan page of The Recipes of Bea with the Recipe of the Day! An unmissable appointment to start the day all together!
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very cheap
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 20 Pieces
- Cooking methods: No cooking
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Winter, Christmas
- Energy 92.58 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 12.12 (g) of which sugars 1.10 (g)
- Proteins 4.71 (g)
- Fat 3.15 (g) of which saturated 0.95 (g)of which unsaturated 0.51 (g)
- Fibers 0.79 (g)
- Sodium 222.46 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 42 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients to prepare the Christmas Trees for Appetizer or Aperitif
- 10 slices sandwich bread (rectangular type, not square, please)
- 140 g canned tuna in water
- 50 g arugula
- 50 g ricotta cheese
- 10 slices cheese (similar to galbanino)
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 pinch pepper
- 1 drizzle extra virgin olive oil
- as needed chives
- 1 teaspoon mustard
- 1 pinch curry
Please do not throw away the leftover sandwich bread from this recipe, I will reveal in the coming days what we can prepare with this bread. Get ready because it will be another quick and tasty appetizer or aperitif to enjoy!
Tools for Preparing the Christmas Trees with Sandwich Bread
- 1 Cutting board
- 1 Cookie cutter
- 1 Mixer
- 1 Teaspoon
- 2 Small bowls
- 20 Toothpicks
- 1 Knife
If you want, I left you the links to purchase the cookie cutters and the mixer to chop and mince many ingredients easily and quickly. With this mixer, we can prepare a perfect tuna sauce in a few minutes.
Recipe Steps for Stuffed Christmas Tree Sandwiches
Let’s start by arranging on the work surface all the ingredients needed for the preparation of the stuffed Christmas tree sandwiches. So let’s take the canned tuna, the ricotta, the arugula, the spices we have chosen to use, the slices of sandwich bread, the cheese and likewise the mixer, the cutting board and knife and the toothpicks. In short, the more at hand you have tools and ingredients, the faster we will be in the preparation.
We can proceed: take the mixer bowl or chopper and pour the canned tuna into it, add the amount of ricotta, add the spices and salt. It’s your choice regarding the chives, pepper, and curry if you like them, I do, but if you don’t, you can substitute them with parsley and paprika, for example.
Start the mixer and make a creamy tuna sauce. Obviously, if you don’t have or don’t want to use ricotta, you can replace it with classic mayonnaise. It will make the sauce nice and creamy and won’t alter the tuna flavor. Set aside the sauce that we just prepared.
Now place the slices of sandwich bread on the cutting board and with the star cookie cutters cut out the three parts that will create the Stuffed Christmas Trees. It must be said that there should always be three for each tree, of three different sizes, from the largest as the base, the medium for the middle, and the small one as the last layer. Then keep the smallest star shape for the cheese.
I indicated that with this recipe you will obtain 20 Savory Tree Sandwiches of course this will be possible if you are careful when cutting out the stars from the bread. If you leave too much space between one cutter and another, you will not reach this number. I advise you to watch the video recipe before proceeding so as to understand well how to cut out stars from the sandwich bread.
Arrange the stars of the same size close to each other to avoid mistakes when making the Christmas Trees. We can then proceed.
With a teaspoon, we can place some tuna sauce on the base of the largest star. Don’t put too much, it will surely come out when we assemble the trees. Place a few arugula leaves, I tore them with my hands to make them softer and I removed the hard part of the stem.
Place the medium-sized star on top of the sauce and continue in the same way. Take a teaspoon of sauce, then the arugula and then the last star. On this last base, we will not have to spread the sauce or place the arugula.
Take the cheese similar to galbanino and cut many slices, not too thick but not too thin either, as many as the Christmas Trees we made. Pierce the stars with toothpicks and place them at the top and center of each tree. If you can’t understand this step, you can watch the video recipe you find below the first photo.
The Christmas Tree Sandwiches are finally ready to be served to our guests or family. They are a perfect appetizer or a tasty aperitif. These Christmas Trees with sandwich bread are easy, quick, and no-bake and will win everyone over!
I just have to wish you good appetite and remind you that I wait for you every day here on my blog with many recipes like this! I’ll also give you a sneak peek of the next recipe since you came to the blog interested in this recipe which can be served as an appetizer or aperitif. We will prepare together a fragrant and delicious homemade Hugo Spritz! So the aperitif will be truly complete and we will have prepared everything ourselves!
Tips and Variations:
I recommend not using cutters that are too small, it will be difficult to cut out the little stars to create the Christmas tree sandwiches. Plus, you’ll have very little space to place the tuna sauce and the arugula that we have as the main ingredients of this Christmas appetizer.
Obviously, for the variations, a world opens up, you can choose any fillings that come to mind! Free rein to your creativity, open the refrigerator and discover how many different combinations you can already create with the ingredients at your disposal. You will certainly make nice culinary discoveries this way. If the fridge isn’t enough, open the pantry, in this case, I’m sure you’ll find ingredients you didn’t think could be useful for creating new flavors.
