Spritz Cookies

It's not a Christmas cookie tray without a few of these classics.  They add a touch of fun and color.  And they're tiny, which makes them a great tool to fill up the awkward little spaces between all of the other shapes and sizes.   My mom and I have made these before, but this year was more exciting because we were using my new Cookie Pro!

We opted for the Classic Spritz Recipe that comes with the instruction manual.  There were also chocolate and cheese cracker varieties, and I'm willing to bet a fancy recipe or two out in internet-world...  But we kept the recipe simple and instead changed up our usual red and green sprinkles for white, silver, and gold from Williams-Sonoma.

I just love silver and gold for Christmas decorations, don't you?

Recipe:
1 1/2 cups butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Thoroughly cream butter and sugar.

Add egg, milk, vanilla, and almond extracts; beat well.

(Again, my Kitchen Aide Stand Mixer did an awesome job, especially after we bought this new blade that makes scraping the bowl a lot easier - highly recommend - thanks Mom!)

Stir together flour and baking powder; gradually add to creamed mixture, mixing to make a smooth dough.  Do not chill.

Place dough into Cookie Pro and press cookies onto ungreased cookie sheet.  (It may take a try or two to get your technique down - our first few shapes were a little wonky - but it went smoothly from there.)

Add sprinkles of choice before baking.  It's not a Christmas Spritz cookie without sprinkles.

(Wow, what a mess!  Hopefully you don't have carpet in your kitchen.  I do.  And I'm still vacuuming up sprinkles.  Who puts carpet in a kitchen?  Seriously.)

Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned around edges.  Remove cookies from sheet; cool on rack.

Makes 7-8 dozen cookies.

Tips and Tricks:
As we progressed, we learned a few things that will make this whole process easier next time.  The sprinkles stick better to certain shapes - basically the shapes without the holes.  There were also a few shapes on which we preferred certain colors over others.  Just a matter of preference.

Also, the sprinkles stick to the cookies much better if the dough has been partially cooked.  My mom discovered this accidentally.  Since I have no counter space, and the kitchen table was reserved for cookie rack cooling, she was decorating cookies while the tray was on the stove.  If you remember correctly, heat pours out of the back stove burner when the oven is on.  One tray was sitting a bit too far back, and she noticed that the cookies were melting a bit.  Momentary panic dispelled when she discovered how much more easily the sprinkles stuck.

Who would have thought I'd ever appreciate my lame, cheap, old, broke-ass oven?  For those of you with functioning kitchen appliances (I'm jealous!), it would probably work to pop the cookie tray in for a couple minutes, take it out, sprinkle away, then return to oven for the remainder of the cooking time.