Irish Lass would you share the recipe for the spritz cookies. I have been looking for a melt in the mouth recipe for years. When I was in high school many many years ago they served the best spritz cookie I have ever tasted and I have tried a lot of recipes but none were the melt in the mouth kind I was looking for.
Mary Lou
I don't mind at all.
Using confectioner's sugar (aka powdered sugar) in the dough is the secret to melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Here it is:
-245g (2 cups + 2 tsp.) King Arthur AP flour
-224g (1 cup) softened/room temperature butter
-80g (2/3 cup) confectioner’s sugar
-45g (2/3 cup)
finely ground almond meal [ground from 45g of whole almonds. I use my pampered Chef manual rotary grater with the fine blade- it gives me a fine/fluffy grind with no solid bits. If you don't have something that can grind that fine- use finely ground almond flour/meal from the store].
-2 large egg yolks (for what it's worth, mine usually weigh between 32g and 34g)
-4g (3/4th tsp.) vanilla extract
-1g (1/4 tsp.) almond extract
-1/8 tsp. salt
1) Mix the flour, almond meal and salt in a bowl. Set aside.
2) In a separate bowl (or stand mixer), beat butter until fluffy.
3) Gradually beat in the confectioner’s sugar, and continue to beat until smooth.
4) Beat in the vanilla and egg yolks until combined and the mixture is fluffy.
5) Slowly add the flour mixture and mix on low (or hand-stir) until just combined. Don’t over beat.
6) Wrap dough and place in refrigerator for an hour or so to stiffen/firm up so that it can be fed through a cookie press without sticking too badly and to make well-shaped cookie forms. Alternatively, you can place it in the freezer for 15 minutes or so instead.
Dough can be refrigerated for up to 4 days. Set it out on the counter to soften up a little first if you find it too hard to work with, but don't let it get too soft or the dough won't form a good shape.
7) Feed cookie dough through a cookie press using whichever shape disk you desire onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet.
8 ) Preheat oven to 350F/176C.
9) While the oven is heating, place cookie-laden sheet in the freezer for 15 minutes to firm up the raw cookies so that they hold their shape through baking.
10) Bake @ 350F/176C for 8 to 10 minutes, or just until the very outer edges start to turn a faint, golden color. Don’t over bake, or the cookies will be tough instead of melt-in-your-mouth.
11) Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 1 minute, and then place on a cooling rack to completely cool.
12) Once cool, you can either store the cookies in an airtight tin right away, or you can be fancy like me and dip half of each of the cookies in melted chocolate. Or you can dust with confectioner's sugar.
13) If you decide to dip them in chocolate, pre-chill a parchment-lined cookie sheet first. As you dip each cookie, place them on the chilled cookie sheet so that the chocolate will set up quicker.
14) Store in an airtight tin on the counter, or refrigerate. For what it's worth, they last nicely in a tin on my counter for at least 3 weeks at a time.
Makes about 3 or 4 dozen cookies or so, depending on how big you make the shapes.
For what it's worth, I like to press the dough through my stand mixer with the cookie-press attachment using the star shape die. It pushes my cold dough out effortlessly into a long, star shape strip that I can cut into 4" lengths, and then shape into whatever shape I desire.
The first time I made these just this early autumn, I didn't have a cookie press of any kind, but used a piping bag instead. Yikes! Let's just say that that was no picnic. Maybe if I had Arnold Swarzenegger around to press all that cold/firm dough out, it would have gone much better for me and with much less muscle ache. What a pain in the biceps that was! lol I had tried letting my dough get soft enough out on the counter to be able to pipe them out of the bag easier, but the softened dough did not form a good cookie shape. It was the last of the deciding factors in us finally purchasing the cookie/mincer attachment for my mixer. It was a very good purchase indeed!
IrishLass
