Spritz Cookies

These are such a simple pleasure, much like the above cheesy Christmas picture. Its really just a butter cookie and they are perfect with coffee, tea or cocoa. They also add a cheery color to your plate.

You do need a cookie press thing. It comes with lots of different attachments to make different shapes. There are ones for quite a few different holidays in the set. My mom found this set at Michaels, in which you don't really need this post because the recipe is already there on the box.



Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

Start with 1 1/2 cups of softened butter.



Cream together with 1 cup of sugar. Here is my trick because I never remember to pull out the butter far enough ahead. When you start to mix and realize the butter is still too cold... pop it into the preheating oven for just a bit. You want the tips to soften. You don't want soup.

In my experience its better to plug your ears and not look around. Just stare at the butter. Otherwise you might see something sparkly.... ooooooh... then next thing you know you have butter soup.



Add in 2 tablespoons of milk. I use 2 % because thats what I have but I don't think it matters.



Add in 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract. I am always heavy handed on the vanilla, I puffy heart vanilla. Too much almond extract and you'll end up with almond cookies. Not that those are bad but I already have almond cookies on the menu. With just 1/2 teaspoon you get depth of flavor without thinking almond when you bite into them.

Then you just beat it.



In a separate (but equal) bowl dump in 3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour.



How do ya like them finger guns? What exactly am I doing? I do believe that I'm trying to hide the fact I have chocolate and food coloring under my nails. The nails that keep breaking.

But when ever I see finger guns I think of Tina Fey now. Pew! Pew! (thats my finger gun sound).

Ok. Now thats out of the way. Add 1 teaspoon of baking powder to the flour and mix.



Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and combine.

When it starts to look like this just go ahead and stop using the beaters.



You can combine the rest by hand or with a spoon. This is what you want the dough to look like.

It will be soft. DO NOT CHILL the dough like you would for a sugar cookie. Remember this needs to be squeezed thru a contraption.

At this point you can use it as is or you can color it with food coloring. Orange for Halloween pumpkins, pastel flowers, etc. Mine are going to be red and green because I need to break up the brown on the cookie trays.



Red food coloring goes in half. Um, mom... why do you have gigantic bottles of food coloring with no dropper lid on it? I just can't be trusted with a large bottle of coloring with nothing to control the pouring.



I turned the other half green. Its so unnatural looking. Kinda icky. But its Christmas so its OK. There are a lot of exceptions made at Christmas time.

For example: anything that sparkles so much it may be bedazzled. I love twinkles and sparkles. I mean, you won't see me walking around in a bedazzled vest or anything but Christmas is the only time I pull out glitter decorations. It may be because it takes forever to stop finding glitter all over the place. Are we supposed to be doing something here?



Oh yes, this is what the form looks like. You just twist it on to the bottom of the press.


Do you see that booger on my hand? I just want you to know its not a booger. Its dough. I swear.



Stuff the dough in the press and screw on the handle.



Place the tip on the cookies sheet, squeeze the handle once and voila!


Note: the first time you do this you may need to squeeze twice to get it going and you'll end up with a really fat cookie. This is not acceptable for the cookie tray so you must eat it immediately after baked.

This is the time to top with sprinkles or other pretty edibles. Like if you are patient and you want to add "decorations" to the little trees.


Bake them in the oven for 8 minutes. I realize the box says 10-12 but they get too brown for my liking and the colors look weird. 8 minutes works for me.



See the fatty in there? That was the starter. The round one is from the left over dough in the press.

They will crisp as they cool.



These cookies are quite dangerous because they are so simple in flavor. You can eat 1 chocolate cookie and feel like you indulged. These are so innocent you can really eat 10 before you blink twice. Oh but they are delicious.....just one bite.....no, just one more....