What Would Have Been Spritzer Cookies

I received a cookie press as a Christmas present a year and a half ago but had never bothered to use it. I didn’t think much of plain butter cookies – seemed a tad boring to be honest. But I’ll be visiting an elderly friend in a few days and she loves plain butter cookies. So I decided to break out my brand new cookie press and get pressing!

Except it didn’t work as it should.

The cap holding the template kept unscrewing itself every time I pressed down – leading to leaking dough everywhere. It was not a pretty sight. At all.

I thought it was me – I didn’t know how to screw the lid on. But after 10 tries of various possibilities and YouTube-ing and googling and swearing I had to conclude it wasn’t me – it was the press.

And that’s how I got stuck with a batch of spritzer cookie dough with no idea what to do with it. Ended up just rolling it into balls and pressing nuts into them. Still reasonably pretty and tasty – but not like what spritzer cookies were meant to be.

Almonds in front, walnuts in the middle and the few flower shaped spritzer cookies that I managed to wrestle out of the cookie press before giving up.

The dough was lovely and light and buttery though – here’s the recipe. And I wish you all the best with your cookie presses.

225g butter, room temperature
100g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
295g plain flour

1. Preheat oven to 160 Celcius (fan forced).
2. Cream butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
3. Add egg and vanilla essence – beat until fully incorporated
4. Add flour. Roll into a narrow log and insert into cookie press and press onto unlined cookie pans.
5. Bake for about 10 minutes or until slightly golden around the edges.

If your cookie press fails – feel free to try out my option.