Use a clean egg carton to make a cute display for the cookies!
Sorry about the cheesy title… I couldn’t help myself!
I love eating a cookie with my morning coffee. I know, not a good habit, but such a tasty one! Buttery cookies are usually the best too–the coffee cuts through the buttery-ness and makes a great combination. One of my favorite (and my husband’s absolute favorite) is spritz cookies.
Basically a buttery, somewhat crumbly, almond extract-y, just sweet enough cookie, spritz cookies are usually baked around Christmas time and piped using a cookie press. They are relatively sturdy and dense, with no chemical leavening agent, so they hold up to cookie presses, or rolling and cutting. Personally, I’ve always thought cookie presses are super annoying to use, and it’s just as easy to roll the dough into a log, freeze it while I clean up, then take it out and slice while the oven preheats. No annoying cookie press to use and clean up.
Since Easter is coming, I thought making egg-shaped cookies would be fun. I decided to make a yellow “egg yolk” cookie log and encapsulate it with the white of the “egg white”. In order to do this, you must have the concentrated food coloring, such as Ateco or Wilton. I just bought three colors of the Wilton gel coloring–red, yellow, and blue–at a local craft store, and I have been able to make any color I want with it. You hardly use any, so it lasts for a really long time. I can’t tell you how much better the colors are when you use these concentrated colors compared to the watered-down food coloring you can buy in the grocery store. A must have!
OR
Rolling the dough into an egg shape wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I rolled the dough into an ok egg shape, froze it, then re-shaped it slightly after it was a little more solid and held its shape better.
Egg-shaped Spritz Steps
1. Make dough.
2. Put 1/3 dough in separate bowl. Dye yellow.
3. Roll yellow dough into a log about 1-inch thick. Wrap in plastic and freeze.
4. After yellow dough is frozen, unwrap and wrap remaining “white” dough around it.
5. Roll into an egg-shape, with one end more tapered than the other. Wrap and freeze for a little while, then remove and re-shape if needed.
6. After dough is hard, about 1 hour, remove and slice about 1/4-inch thick.
7. Bake, cool, and enjoy!
Spritz Recipe
Yield: About 4 dozen cookies.
Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 large egg yolks
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Instructions
Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add yolks, salt, vanilla, and almond and beat in until evenly incorporated. Mix the flour into the dough until just combined. Do not overmix – stir with a wooden spoon at the end to finish combining dough.
See above for steps on making the egg shapes.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 9-11 minutes or until just slightly golden. Let cool on sheet pan for about 5-10 minutes to firm up slightly. Then transfer to wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 10 days. Or… I actually prefer to store my cookies in a glass container like the one below from Amazon or Crate and Barrel has a similar glass container. A little bit of air gets in, but this makes the cookies not get that too-soft smooshy texture.
