Contents
A soft butter dough forced through a press or a star tip into wreaths, S-shapes and ridged bars. The German spritzen means to squirt. Scandinavian and German Christmas baking both rely on them, because one batch of a single dough produces a dozen different-looking cookies with no rolling and no cutting.
Spritz is the clearest case in baking where dough temperature is a working parameter rather than a step.
What makes it work
- Room-temperature dough, unchilled, always. This is the one butter cookie that must not be refrigerated before shaping. Cold dough will not extrude, and forcing it snaps the press.
- Press onto a cool, ungreased, bare metal tray. Not parchment, not silicone, not greased. The dough must grip the metal or it lifts away with the press. This is the single most common failure and it is entirely counterintuitive.
- No baking powder. Lift would blur the ridges. The definition of a good spritz is that the pattern survives.
- Egg yolk only, or whole egg for a firmer cookie. Yolk gives the sandy melt; white gives strength and a slight chew.
Ingredients
Makes about 60 small cookies.
- 340 g unsalted butter, softened but still cool
- 200 g granulated sugar
- 1 egg, or 2 yolks
- 1 tsp vanilla — see Pure vanilla extract
- ½ tsp almond extract
- 420 g all-purpose flour
- 4 g fine salt
To finish: coloured sanding sugar, sprinkles, glacé cherries, or melted chocolate for dipping
Method
Cream the butter and sugar for a full four minutes — this dough has no chemical leavening, so all its lightness is mechanical. Beat in the egg and the extracts.
Add the flour and salt and mix only until the flour disappears. Overworked spritz dough is tough and, worse, stiff enough to jam the press.
Load the press and fire onto a bare, cool tray. If the cookie will not release, the tray is warm or greased. Decorate before baking.
Bake 190 °C / 375 °F for 8–10 minutes, until the edges are just tan and the tops still pale. Cool one minute on the tray, then move.
Notes
- No press? A piping bag with a large open star tip does everything except the flat ridged bars.
- Chocolate spritz: replace 40 g of the flour with 40 g cocoa — see Cocoa and cocoa mixes.
- The Swedish version, spritsar, is often piped as a ring and dipped half in chocolate; the Norwegian serinakaker adds chopped almonds and pearl sugar.
- Keeps three weeks in a tin, undecorated. Sprinkles bleed colour after a week in humidity.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Cookie recipes · cookies · baking equipment · baking fats
Nearby: russian tea cakes · thumbprint cookies · kourabiedes