Snowflake Spritz Cookies

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Some of the most beautiful shapes in the world are the six-pointed wonders of  snowflakes.

Delicate, intricate, and lovely, these gorgeous forms are one of the hallmarks of winter. They also make exquisite cookies!

By far the most popular cookie press disks that we sell are our snowflakes. So much so that I felt the need to make the Impress!™ Bakeware customers twice as happy and add a second set of snowflakes just in time for winter. For this blog I made our basic all-purpose spritz recipe and pressed cookies using both sets of disks, playing with different backgrounds photographically to give readers a true feel for how these little bite-size wonders come out.

I also played around with different sugaring and decorating options. Personally, I like them plain (as pictured in the top photograph), and the cookies themselves are sweet enough not to require sanding sugars for taste. I find that plain snowflakes show off their details better, but I have to admit, the sparkle of sugars and decors can be quite eye-catching. I pressed and decorated in three decors-  larger grain sanding sugar, fine sanding sugar, and edible sparkling glitters that kind of look like snow (see pictured below).

These are a breeze to make, so let’s get started! Gather your ingredients. You’ll also need a cookie press and the Impress!™ Snowflake Disks of your choice.

First make the basic spritz dough. The key to great spritz cookies is the dough. It has a particular consistency that when made right, presses smoothly, quickly and easily.

Impress!™ Vanilla-Honey Spritz

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened (not melted)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup honey

1 and 1/2 Tablespoons vanilla extract

1 egg

4 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

clear sanding sugars, if desired

Preheat oven to 400°F. Cream the butter well. Add the sugar and cream it very well again. Add the honey, then vanilla and egg; beat well. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add it slowly to the butter mixture, just until the flour is mixed in. DO NOT over-mix!

Spritz dough should be soft but not sticky. It has an almost crumbly texture that doesn’t stick to your fingers.

Load the dough into your press barrel, packing it in with the back of a spoon to avoid any air pockets forming. Place your disk and begin pressing. It’s OK if the first few come out misshapen. That happens to even the most experienced pressers. It sometimes takes a few cookies to build up a consistent pressure in the barrel to make the cookies come out uniformly. Just throw the bad ones back in the dough bowl to be re-pressed. Keep a steady pressing rhythm for best results.

 (click on this picture to see the pressed cookies in detail)

Now add your sanding sugars, if desired. Even plain white granulated sugar can be used. Its texture is very fine compared to sanding sugars and allows the cookie details to show a little better, though admittedly this sugar is not quite as sparkly.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until the edges begin to brown. All ovens are different, so check that first batch early- at 6 or 7 minutes to gauge your baking time. Let sit for just a minute or two then remove from the cookie sheet and cool on rack.

I photographed my cookies on different backgrounds to really show them off.The cookies above on the brown background are shown in the three different decors. Each cookie is repeated three times with a different sugar/decor. If you click and zoom in you can see how the different sugars accentuate the cookies.

A crystal platter  provides a sophisticated presentation! For the first picture, I kept the plain cookies around the outside edge to show their shape, and put the sparkly glitter decorated ones in the center. For the next picture, I just started piling snowflake cookies on deep!

Speaking of piling snow on deep, it began to snow here in Colorado as I started this blog post. So I made a hot cup of cocoa in my snowflake mug, grabbed a plateful of cookies (I was done photographing them, after all!) and sat down to write.

Enjoy! May you all have the most cheerful of winters, plenty of hot cocoa, and plenty of cookies.

Happy Baking!

~Susie

Disk Designer/Recipe Developer at Impress! Bakeware, LLC

Our website with more recipes and over 200 disks in 30 disk themes: http://stores.impressbakeware.com/

Our Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/Impress-Bakeware/pages/12702786011

Link to purchase “Snowflakes” disk set:

http://stores.impressbakeware.com/snowflakes/

Link to purchase the “Snowflakes Two” disk set:

http://stores.impressbakeware.com/snowflakes-two/

As always, if you’d like to see more disks, be sure to check out  www.impressbakeware.com for over 200 disk designs and many more recipes and ways to use a cookie press. You can press icing decorations on cupcakes, make chocolate truffles, crackers, peanut butter spreads, pumpkin mousse parfaits, and much more. Our disks are also available on Amazon.