Cookie Thursday: Spritz (Spritzgeback) (recipe)

Little A and I attempted to make Spritz cookies this week – the pictures in my ancient Betty Crocker Cooky Book, circa 1963, made it look so easy, and being the Kitchen Gadget Girl, of course I had a Spritz Maker handy. We thought we could whip out some of the cute shapes they had in the book, maybe even some with food coloring! And the recipe itself was easy enough:

Spritz Cookies

•  1 cup butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/4 cups flour

Mix butter, sugar, egg, salt and flavoring thouroughly. Add flour and mix well. Using 1/4 of the dough at a time, forc

e through cookie press onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 6 – 9 minutes until set, but not brown. Cool.

Easy, right? Well, actually, Spritz making requires quite a bit of technique and timing. Apparently, there is an optimal temperature for the dough, and a little twisting technique with the Spritz Maker. I have a bunch of Spritz tips, and Little A and I started with a flower shaped one. Unfortunately, they mostly ended up looking like blobs. Then we tried a funnel shaped tip, but that ended up making larger blobs, that I seemed to intrinsically know would not cook all the way through.

Finally, we ended up with a small star and the flat disc, and were able to squish out long, shaped cookies that we cut into smaller pieces. I also chilled the dough, which made things a little easier, thanks to recommendations from this site. And after reading a couple other blogs about Spritz Cookies, I realize that my Spritz Maker might be a little outdated. I am not sure what the best Cookie Press is, do you know?