Happy Cookie Season…

It is Cookie Season am I right? Cue the Elves, cue ALL the elves! Also, note from Santa: Cookies improve everything wedding!!! 🙂

From our friends at Bobbi Brinkman Photography we share their annual cookie post with our wishes for a wonderful holiday season, no matter how you celebrate!

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“Full disclosure, we love cookies, and almost every type of cookies (You can keep those pffeffernuesse things)— but Christmas Cookies leave us weak in the knees!!

The sight of sticks of butter softening on the countertop, the little bottles of extracts and flavorings, the tubs of sugars, sprinkles and festive sugar bits—– oh my!

This year the elves around these parts had to replace their trusty cookie dough press thingie—- as happens every few years or so for one reason or another. We went with the Wilton Cookie Press because we had limited choices at the time and we wondered if we’d regret our choice. The short answer is NO, despite it’s economical price point, it worked great! We ALSO (gasp!) changed up our traditional Spritz recipe for the one that Wilton recommends— because maybe if the recipe and the press came from the same place the cookie pressing exercise wouldn’t be so stressful? The outcome? Perfection.

Because cookies are awesome and everyone should make them, and because the ingredients are readily available (along with the press) and not overly complicated or expensive we pass it along with the 2 tweaks we made to most closely replicate our ‘old standard’.

Go on, make some merry, make some cookies! You can work off those calories later! Santa approves!

How To Use a Cookie Press

The Wilton Spritz Recipe (with the BBP Tweaks!)

© Wilton & Creativebug Inc. 2015

Spritz Cookie Recipe

Spritz Cookie Ingredients:
2 1/2 – 3 cups all-purpose flour *BBP Tweak- 3 cups King Arthur All Purpose Flour
– 1 teaspoon baking powder
– (3 sticks) butter, softened
– 1 cup granulated sugar
– 1 egg
– 2 tablespoons milk  * BBP Tweak 1 tablespoon milk and 1 tablespoon heavy cream
– 1 teaspoon Wilton Imitation Clear Vanilla Extract
– 1/2 teaspoon Wilton Imitation Almond Extract

**BBP Tweak- 1 Tbs. Wilton Imitation Almond Extract and no vanilla extract

makes about 7 – 8 dozen cookies

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In medium bowl, combine flour and baking powder.
In large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg, milk and extracts; mix well. Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture, mixing to make a smooth dough. Do not chill.
Place dough into cookie press and press cookies onto ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 8-11 minutes or until lightly browned around edges. Cool cookies on cool grid 5 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely on grid.
Note, to color dough:
For flower cookies, color cookie dough using Lemon Yellow icing color. For Christmas cookies, color cookie dough using Christmas Red and Kelly Green icing colors. For Fourth of July cookies, color cookie
dough using Red-Red and Royal Blue icing colors (leave 1/3 of dough uncolored for “white” cookies).
Add a small amount of color with a toothpick. Gently blend color into dough using stand mixer paddle attachment, or knead in by hand. Stop to check the color. If it is too light, add a little more color and continue mixing
until desired shade is reached.
Tint dough a little darker than you would tint icing. Cookies will bake lighter than dough appears.

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Hope your holidays are shaping up to be the very best EVER!!!!! May they be fueled with butter and sugar and all deliciousness!”

Thanks BBP! Now go on, bake some cookies! We can’t wait to see social media flooded with photos of yours!