We ate a lot of Norwegian cookies at Christmas time when I was a kid, courtesy of Grandma Gunda. Spritz are not really Norwegian in origin, but they are popular among Norwegian’s, and these were my favorites.
I always think of Grandma Gunda when I’m pushing the dough out of the cookie press, and in particular I remember my “baking day” with Grandma. She was about 80 years old at the time, and I showed up early to her house for a full day of baking. As I was working the cookie press and putting cookies down onto the sheet, she was following behind me and scooping them back up, repeating “No, no, no” until I nearly quit. None of my cookies were good enough! Now when I make Spritz myself, I keep almost every cookie, but I hear Grandma’s disapproving voice in my head the entire time. Occasionally one of the boys will start scooping up the bad ones, since they’ve heard this story every year since they were toddlers.
I recently found Grandma’s spritz recipe in her old recipe notebook, and it is totally different than this one that I found on the Wilton cookie press box and that I’ve been using for years. The recipe below is from an older Wilton cookie press. The recipe that came with my new press is a little different. The plastic discs from the old kit lasted about 20 years, but finally started to crack and deteriorate, so I bought myself a new press this year.
Maybe I’ll try Grandma’s recipe next year, but these are the cookies my kids have been growing up with.
Spritz Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups melted butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
Instructions
- Mix together butter, sugar, egg, milk, vanilla, and almond extract.
- In a separate bowl, combine flour and baking powder. Gradually add flour mixture to liquid batter.
- Place dough in cookie press and press out cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
- Sprinkle the raw cookies with colored decorators sugar (red and green for Christmas), and bake at 400 deg. for 8-10 minutes, until just starting to brown at the edges.
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