Making Christmas Spritz Cookies

I've never made Christmas Spritz cookies before (I didn't even know there was such a thing, I thought a butter cookie was a butter cookie...you know, the one's you buy in a tin at Christmastime?).  I've never used my Cooky Press (click on the link to learn more about my new cooky press), but it was that thrift store super deal purchase that educated and inspired me. 

Making the dough was a piece of cake, or should I say piece of cookie, ha ha.  Using the Cooky Press was another story.  I ended up making about 6 dozen cookies, but the few you see on the Santa plate below are the only ones that actually looked like what they were intended to look like!  I didn't realize a Cooky Press required experience of how much dough to release from the press and push onto the cookie sheet while at the same time incorporating an artistic twist of the wrist to produce recognizable and/or attractive cookies!  (This was a huge learning curve for me, but I can't wait to make them again!)

In case you are wondering about the candy cane in the middle...I formed that by hand...I had leftover dough that wasn't enough to push through the press, so I rolled 3 candy canes...

Despite my less than artistic accomplishment with my Spritz cookies, the end result far exceeded my expectations...they have the most delightful buttery taste and have just enough of a crispy crunch on the outside and are delicately firm (but not hard) on the inside.  Typically the cookies are decorated with colored sugar, or frosting, or chocolate, or candies, but since this was my first time, I chose to focus on being able to produce the properly shaped cookies with the Cooky Press.  The cookies are so good by themselves anyway!  If you make any Christmas cookies, I highly recommend trying these, you will be very happy you did!


I made Classic Spritz Cookies from Wilton.com (click on the link to see the full recipe).  The only thing I did differently was to add 2 pinches of salt (when researching which recipe I wanted to use, I noticed several added a little salt).  I also used 1/2 heavy cream and 1/2 2% mild to make the 2 tbsp of milk; I know when baking, the fat is important and using 2% milk is not recommended, so I created my own whole milk though it was actually probably a little richer than whole milk. 

The dough is easy to make and I won't take you through all the steps, click on the link above and follow the directions.  But please indulge me in sharing my Cooky Press use learning curve...

Put some dough into the canister...

...screw on the top with press and base with cookie shape together...

...place the base of the canister close to your cookie sheet (learned this along the way) and turn the handle to press the dough through the cookie shape, about 1 full turn of the handle, and press the dough down onto the cookie sheet.  Using a slight twist up and away from the dough (another technique learned along the way today), pull the press away, leaving the dough on the cookie sheet, and you get something that looks something like what it is supposed to look like, in my case a Christmas tree...this was my very first successful twist of the press cookie that I didn't scrunch up and put back into the dough bowl.  The first 5 or 6 attempts at cookies looked like foreign objects!

These are the others from that first batch...trees with tails, trees with bulging middles, unidentifiable trees...but oh so yummy!  Yes, all made with the tree shape!  I did experiment with the star and flower shapes, but I went back to the Christmas tree, being that I seemed to get the hang of that one, and it is Christmas after all!

This is the resulting bag of cookies...they don't look too bad, do they!?

Trust me when I tell you that you really want to try making these cookies.  They are some of the best cookies we've ever had...Johny was thrilled to see so many in the cookie bag!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise