Delicate buttery spritz cookies just beg to be pressed as snowflakes. Their delicate shapes pop to life when enhanced with cool wintry colors and outlined with crisp white icing. Snowflake cookies so airy and light they will melt on your tongue like the real thing.
Given that the fancy decorating and sweet icing would steal the show on this blog, I kept to my simplest go-to spritz recipe, the honey-vanilla. It is a simple, easy-to-press dough that tints well. The cookies do not break easily so they are great for transporting to parties.
I decorated these two ways. First, I outlined them in white icing. Second, I outlined them in white icing and then dipped the icing in sparkling sanding sugars. My family and friends had their opinions as to which looked better, but I figured I’d share them both ways and let you decide!
(*NOTE: Our new disks are made of a solid white material, but the designs are exactly the same, and press identically. At the time of our 2019 Re-Opening the SNOWFLAKES sets have been combined into one 8 disk set.)
Our website has all of our 200+ disk shapes, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, baking accessories plus more about our Women/Family Owned company! impressbakeware.com
All products are on our Etsy shop.
Our cookie press and disks (only these products) are also available on Amazon .
Let’s bake. 🙂
🙏 We have a request: If you are enjoying our recipes (ads free!) please consider supporting our Women/Family-owned USA Small Business! We sell over 300 shapes of cookie press disks, beautiful embossed rolling pins, & more. We make no money from ads on this blog. I create these recipes to give our customers a wide variety of creative ideas. The 2022 holiday season is off to a difficult start for many small businesses. If you like what we do, every disk and pin purchased helps us stay in business and keep bringing you our totally unique recipes, disks, and pins. THANK YOU for helping our families through this tough year! ~Susie & Jill & our Families
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
GEL food coloring (NOT liquid)
White icing for decorating (use an icing designed for decorating such as royal icing. If you use canned icing just make sure it isn’t too runny to make neat lines).
Sparkling white sanding sugar
Gather your ingredients and disks.
Preheat oven to 400°F.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter thoroughly, preferably with an electric mixer. I like to pretend I’m making frosting and set the mixer on the highest “whip” speed. This well-creamed butter is the foundation of great spritz cookies. It’s where their light and airy texture begins.
Add the sugar and cream it again. Keep whipping it up like you are making frosting, until you have a light fluffy mixture.
Now add the honey and as you can guess whip it up again. Add the vanilla and egg and try to keep it all as fluffy as possible.
Slowly add the flour mixture and blend it in until fully incorporated. Great spritz dough has a not too sticky texture with an almost dry, stiff feel.
You can always troubleshoot a spritz dough by adding water or vanilla extract a teaspoon at a time to stiff, dry dough, or adding flour a tablespoon at a time to overly sticky or soft dough. Perfect spritz dough has a soft malleable texture that is not too sticky or too stiff.
Now divide your dough into smaller bowls. Use your gel food coloring to tint the dough to the shade of your liking. I went with bold wintry shades of blues, minty green, and purple, but I could easily see this being beautiful in pastels or even a single color. Your choice! Get creative with it. That’s been my mission with designing all of these disks, to enable people to get truly creative with their cookie presses.
Go ahead and use your hands to mix the color in if a spoon gets tiring. I do it all the time.
Once your dough is colored pack it into the press barrel, using the back of a spoon to remove air pockets as you go. Choose your first disk and start pressing.
Try to get into a consistent rhythm as you press. While the first few cookies may come out a bit mis-shapen, once pressure builds up in the barrel they should form well. Remember that with one-click-per-cookie presses it isn’t always necessary to use exactly one click per cookie. Think of “clicking” as a pumping mechanism for the dough. Some of the smaller shapes might have better detail if you press less than a full click, whereas a bigger one might need an extra little squeeze.
If you feel your whole rhythm is off just press some clicks into the air and toss that dough back on the bowl to be re-pressed. That can be a good ideas as you being pressing a re-loaded barrel of dough as well. It re-sets the pressure. Try to learn to feel the cookies sticking to the pans as you press. In time, it will become intuitive and easier!
Press your cookies and bake them for 6-9 minutes, checking early and often as all ovens are different. These don’t need to brown too much, so don’t over-bake them. Watch for a “set” baked look.
Let them sit on the cookie sheet for about 2 minutes before removing to a wire cooking rack.
Decorating the snowflakes is fairly straightforward. Follow the ridges and keep your icing lines as neat as possible. I am not the world’s greatest cookie decorator, by any means. Spritz is my thing, not icing! I did my best to be as precise as possible, and after a while I found it quite fun. I got into a nice groove and became much better at it as I went!
If you’re going to be sugaring them after icing, you don’t have to be nearly as crisp with your lines. If you’re leaving the icing plain, try to begin and end each line segment with a small dot. It maintains control and looks cute, too.
I also found that I could decorate the same cookie several different ways by playing with the patter of ridges, outlining some and ignoring others. Sacrifice a few cookies to playing around with patterns (and oh darn you’ll probably have to eat those “mistakes”- dang!)
Here’s an example of decorating snowflake 8. I used the basic ridge outlining. I have to admit it’s nice to have lines to follow for decorating. It takes the guesswork out.
Snowflakes 11, 2, 3, 10, 11, and 4 have some nice patterns you can make.
All twelve designs look like this.
Here they are shown with all twelve disks. (*NOTE: Our new disks are made of a solid white material, but the designs are exactly the same, and press identically. At the time of our 2019 Re-Opening the SNOWFLAKES sets have been combined into one 8 disk set.)
If you’re going to add sparkling sugar to the cookies, simply ice as usual, then gently hold the cookie by its edges and dip it softly into sanding sugar on a small plate. Rock it back and forth a little, being careful not to smear the icing and sugar. Turn it back over and, if needed, brush the excess sugar away with a food safe decorating brush. They look lovely both ways. If you leave the sugars a little messy they have a soft, fuzzy, cozy look. If you wipe away the excess they have a crisp, clean look.
Here I used this method with snowflake 3.
A little messy on the icing but it’s about to get dunked anyway!
You could always mix and match them, too.
That’s it! Colorful iced snowflake spritz cookies.
May they bring some sweet joy to your winter days. I’m going to make some hot cocoa and sit down with some cookies! The Colorado Rockies out my window are covered in snow and the skies are as blue as these snowflakes. Welcome, winter. 🙂
Happy Baking!
~Susie
Disk Designer/Co-Owner at Impress! Bakeware, LLC
Our website has all of our 200+ disk shapes, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, baking accessories plus more about our Women/Family Owned company! impressbakeware.com
All products are on our Etsy shop.
Our cookie press and disks (only these products) are also available on Amazon
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The Snowflakes set: (*NOTE: Our new disks are made of a solid white material, but the designs are exactly the same, and press identically. At the time of our 2019 Re-Opening the SNOWFLAKES sets have been combined into one 8 disk set.)
https://www.impressbakeware.com/products/snowflakes-8-disk-set-for-cookie-presses
**NOTE 11-8-19**
Our new streamlined website is finally up! Get creative this Holiday Season with our 28 unique sets of Cookie Press Disks & the new Impress! Cookie Press. Learn with our recipe tutorials & decorating blog, with expert advice & troubleshooting tips. The press & 12 other disk sets are ready for purchase now, & more will be available as they come in stock! Happy Baking! ~Susie the Disk Designer www.impressbakeware.com
Our products are also available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Impress+Bakeware&ref=bl_dp_s_web_0
Read here about our new cookie press and 5 new disk sets: https://creativecookiepress.com/2019/11/05/were-back-meet-our-new-disks-and-press/
creative cookie press 
I made your honey vanilla recipe and it rocked. Took me a bit to figure out and find my rhythm. 1st time making spritz cookies. All your tips very helpful
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Sharon Chan thank you for the kind words! I’m glad to hear my tips helped you have a successful first pressing experience! It’s an art for sure and it takes a little time to get the hang of it. I’m glad you liked the honey vanilla recipe. It’s a family favorite for us. 🙂 Happy Baking! ~Susie the Disk Designer
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