Spritz

The memories embedded in these little tree-shaped cookies make them so dear to my heart.  My mom used to make these every Christmas and they were such a treat.  I remember sitting down to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (back before it was on DVD) and eating these cookies.  It just didn't feel like Christmas until I popped the first spritz cookie into my mouth.

I took on making these cookies myself probably when I was about sixteen.  I used a cookie press with a twist top to extract the cookies.  A couple years later I got a cookie press with a trigger mechanism that uniformly extracted the cookies with a single click.  My cookie production increased dramatically with that in my arsenal.

I still make these cookies every year for Christmas and Ari has become quite the fan.  He even declared it his favorite cookie this year, much to my delight.  He also is strong enough this year to pull the trigger on the cookie press so he was able to help this year. 

Christmas is the only time of year I make spritz cookies, and I think I have only used one other shape besides the tree in my cookie press.  They just carry such a strong connotation to Christmas for me, I have a hard time making them for anything else.

Spritz

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

5 or 6 drops of green food coloring

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Beat butter and sugar until combines.  Add sugar and baking powder.  Beat in egg, almond extract, vanilla extract.  Add the flour and food coloring and mix until thoroughly integrated.

Place the dough into a cookie press and extract cookies into an ungreased cookie sheet.   Bake for 8 minutes and cool on a wire rack.