Cut butter into pieces. Knead the sugar, butter, flour, espresso powder and egg first with the dough hooks of the hand mixer, then with your hands to a smooth dough. Wrap the dough in foil and chill for about 30 minutes. Roll out dough on a floured work surface 3-4 mm thin. Cut out cookies with tree ball cutters (approx. 13 cm long). Knead the remaining dough, roll out again and cut out.
Cut a hole with a punched spout so that the cookies can be hung up later. Put the cookies on 4 baking trays lined with baking paper. Bake in the preheated oven (electric cooker: 200 °C/ convection oven: 175 °C/ gas: level 3) for about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool down on a cake rack. Mix icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice to a sugar icing. Quarter the icing. Colour 1/4 each of the icing with red, blue and green food colouring. Pour white icing into a piping bag. Cut the blue icing in half again. Colour one half slightly darker and fill 1 teaspoon of icing into piping bag. Spread the cookies with the coloured icing and let them dry.
Quarter the icing. Colour 1/4 each of the icing with red, blue and green food colouring. Pour white icing into a piping bag. Cut the blue icing in half again. Colour one half slightly darker and fill 1 teaspoon of icing into piping bag. Spread the cookies with the coloured icing and let them dry. Cut off a small tip from each piping bag and decorate the cookies with icing, pearls and sugar. Best left to dry overnight
waiting time 13 hours