Spritz Cookies

I bought a new toy for my kitchen last week and I've finally had an excuse to try it out! It's a Wilton Cookie Press that I got from Ebay and you can make different shaped cookies with it very easily. There's different disks which you can add onto the end to make all different shaped cookies and I tried a few this time. Most of them are Christmas tree shaped ones though, because I'm taking them to my sisters house for Christmas Eve.

So here's the disks that I chose to use. You slot these onto the end of the press and the dough comes out through it to form the cookie shape.

And this is what the press looks like. As you can see I've put some of the cookie dough into the pipe and once you screw the end back on all you have to do is put the end against your baking tray and press the trigger once or twice depending on how big you want your cookies. I find that once is enough to make a good shaped cookie. 

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 cups butter

1 cup granulated sugar (I used caster sugar)

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla 

1/2 tsp almond extract

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

Method:

Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Thoroughly cream butter and sugar. Add egg, milk, vanilla and almond extract; beat well. Stir together flour and baking powder; gradually add to creamed mixture, mixing to make a smooth dough. Do not chill. Place dough into Cookie Press and press cookies onto ungreased cookie sheet. 

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

Here's one batch of the cookies in the first shape that I made. These are almost like a wreath shape, so I guess they could still be Christmassy. 

And the second batch, not really Christmassy at all! 

And here's what most of the cookies looked like, Christmas Tree shaped. I actually sprinkled a little bit of cinnamon on top of some of the cookies, just to experiment with the flavour. I've seen these decorated in many different ways, with chocolate, icing or edible sugared glitter. I didn't have any of those on hand, hence the cinnamon.

I also didn't have any almond extract in my pantry so I added a tiny bit more vanilla to the mixture and some cinnamon as well.

This recipe makes a really huge batch of cookies, I'm not sure how many I actually got but the recipe says it makes about 7-8 dozen! I guess because you use so little mixture for each cookie, compared to if you rolled your own balls for cookies it goes so much further. They do stay fresh for quite a few days, so if you don't eat them all straight away then you'll eventually get through them. My sister became quite addicted to these the other day ;) lol