Chocolate Sandwich Cookie Snowflakes and Christmas Tree Spritz Cookies- Mint Option!

This has been a rough month for us at Impress! (November 2020) If you’ve been with us for years you know we are a teeny tiny family-owned and operated business. Susie & Jill- that’s us- we’re it when it comes to this company. Well, us plus our kids and my brother who happens to be married to Jill. 😉 Yep, so as you see this is two sisters-in-law running this show.

We’re so grateful for our kids- Jill’s daughter helps package and ship, plus she has designed disks and created recipes- she’s a fabulous baker! My daughter helped with graphic design. My son does all of the editing and camerawork for my videos, and has had to live with 6 years of hearing, “DON’T EAT THOSE!” interspersed with, “Hey sweetie can you come taste this (5th attempt at some-or-other spritz cookie recipe) please?” I think the poor guy (he’s now 21!) has a cookie complex. LOL

And then there’s my brother. A jack-of all trades if ever I met one. He’s an engineer- our tech guy, our “Oh my gosh HELP come FIX this!” guy. And being one big family, what affects one of us affects all of us. So three weeks ago when he took a terrible fall up on the mountain he works on (we’re in Colorado, that’s how we roll) life got kind of turned upside-down. All I’ll say is surgery was finally done and hopefully he’s now on the mend. But three weeks (now four!) of being a round-the-clock nurse while Impress is in the midst of the huge Holiday selling season has been insane for Jill. A huge shout-out to her for handling all of this and still getting disks out to all of you! (Update November 2021 would you believe he’s scheduled for another surgery for this injury? What a long year this has been!)

As for my brother, this post is for him. Since we were little he’s loved Oreos. So much that he used to sleepwalk and eat them in the middle of the night! When I was deciding what to blog about next, I thought of him and literally while he was in surgery I made up this recipe. These are my “get better big bro” Oreo-inspired Spritz. 😉

I took a little liberty and creative license on these. There are plenty of recipes out there that try to precisely replicate actual Oreos. I went with a more “inspired-by” approach, since spritz cookies are loftier and lighter. That said, these are **amazing** and the overall taste effect once you start eating one is definitely Oreo. When my son the great taste-tester popped the first one in his mouth, he held up his hand and mumbled, “I’m having a moment”. Hahaha.

Ok, enough tales of the Impress family. 😀

Chocolate Sandwich Cookie Spritz

Cookie ingredients

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened (not melted) (I recommend Land O Lakes brand as I know it creams well. I have had trouble with some generic butters not creaming properly and making the dough hard to press)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup honey

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

1 egg

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

For the ultra-decadent stuffing

1/2 cups (1 stick) butter, softened (not melted)

1 teaspoon vanilla (if making the mint option do 1/2 teaspoon each vanilla and mint extract, or all mint if you like it strong!)

2 Tablespoons heavy cream

1/8 teaspoon salt (optional)

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Gather your ingredients and disks.

I chose to do this recipe in snowflakes and Christmas Trees since it’s almost December and I felt like being festive, but you can do any shapes you want! Here’s the Christmas Tree disk from the Christmas set, and the 8 disks from the Snowflakes set, plus the snowflake that comes with our cookie press. 🙂 I love that one. It’s so delicate. (Packaging for these sets, showing more detail, at bottom of post!)

Our website has all of our 200+ disk shapes, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, baking accessories plus more about our Women/Family Owned company in beautiful Colorado Springs! impressbakeware.com

All products are on our Etsy shop.

Our Amazon shop has our cookie press and disks and embossed rolling pins.

🎉SALE! Countdown to Christmas SALE! 15% off cookie press, disks, embossed rolling pins & more. 🎅Support family-owned small businesses! Offer only on our website & popular Etsy Shop December 3-25, 2023. Sale NOT on Amazon store and not on Gift sets or the new recipe book. Happy Baking from our families to yours!

Preheat oven to 400°F.

The first step to fabulous spritz cookie dough is creaming the butter. I am a broken record on this blog about butter, but it’s necessary! Also, again I recommend Land-O-Lakes butter as it is nationally available and I know it always creams correctly. I have had some generic butters work just fine but some just don’t cream properly, making the dough too hard to press. We don’t want that. 

Put your electric mixer on the highest setting and pretend you’re making frosting. Your butter should become creamy and light. Then add the sugar, and then the honey. After those add the egg and vanilla, re-creaming and whipping after each addition.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Add this mixture a little at a time to the butter base until a smooth chocolate dough forms. Make sure all of it is incorporated evenly. It’s gorgeous and the smell is intense chocolate!

It’s best to let this dough sit for five to ten minutes before using. The cocoa is still absorbing liquid, and the dough will become drier, less sticky, easier to handle, and more pressable as you go. Keep an eye on it especially if it’s very warm in your kitchen. Warm dough separates and becomes hard and is never very pressable.

Always remember that you can tweak overly stiff dough by adding more vanilla a teaspoon at a time (or by the tablespoon if it’s particularly stiff), or tweak overly soft or sticky dough by adding flour a tablespoon at a time. Watch some of my videos to see what a correct spritz dough texture looks like.

Load your press with dough using the back of a spoon to remove any air pockets as you go. Choose your first disk and start pressing. Remember that often it takes a few mis-shaped cookies before correct pressure builds in the barrel. Once you have a good shape, try to keep a consistent rhythm.

If you’re having trouble, try clicking into the air a few times and wiping away the dough to start over. It resets the pressure. Remember also with “once click per cookie” presses it’s completely fine to use more or less than a click. Think of the press as just a dough-pumping mechanism. Clicking is how you get the dough to come out. Feel the cookies stick to the sheet and you’ll get the hang of it. Always use un-greased sheets and never use non-stick. Even the most experienced pressers throw goofed up cookies back in the bowl all the time. Don’t be discouraged! Watch my videos if you want to see me troubleshoot on the fly. 😉

As you can see, this dough presses oh so beautifully. The shapes are consistent and are easy to press. So pretty!

I did not add any sprinkles or sugars to the tops of these as the stuffing is going to make them very sweet. But you could add some artistic flare by decorating a bit. I tried a few big white sugar sprinkles and I combined a bunch of bright colors in a cup to make a “christmas lights/ornaments” mix. They were pretty cute!

Bake for 7 to 10 minutes, checking the first batch early and often as all ovens are different and spritz brown very quickly once they start.

Let them sit on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before removing to a wire cooling rack. This helps prevent breakage. Keep your spatula nice and flat as you take them off so they don’t bend while they’re still soft.

While the cookies are cooling make the filling.

Cream the butter with an electric mixer until it is fluffy. Add the vanilla (or vanilla and mint for the mint option) and whip it again. Add one tablespoon of the heavy cream, and you guessed- whip it again. Add the salt if you’re using it. Now start adding the powdered sugar a little at a time.

This filling is going to be quite stiff (think Oreo filling- it’s not a soft frosting!) so when it starts to get unworkable add the rest of the heavy cream. You can easily tweak this to your liking by adding a little more powdered sugar, a tablespoon at a time if it’s too soft, or by adding heavy cream, a teaspoon at a time if it’s too thick.

It’s heavenly. Try not to eat it all before you stuff the cookies.

Choose similarly shaped and sized cookie to pair up for filling.

You can use a knife to add it to the cookies, but I prefer using a decorating bag and tip. For this recipe I wanted seriously thick stuffing, like an Oreo double stuff! So I used a big #10 Wilton round writing tip and piped it onto the cookies.

Oh my gosh it’s so thick!

Now just place your top cookie gently on top. Press down evenly if your cookies are fresh so they don’t crack. Pressing with flat fingers helps.

I am drooling.

Here’s how mine turned out!

I added petite white sugar pearls to the centers of some snowflakes and candy/sprinkle/decor snowflakes to the tree tops for pizazz. I used some of the icing as a glue.

That’s it! This is a super simple recipe that comes together quickly… and the cookies disappear just as fast!

I wish you all a full heart during the holidays, a beautiful winter, and invite you to “Press the possibilities!” Thanks so much for stopping by . 🙂

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 Amazon shop has our cookie press and disks and embossed rolling pins.

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The Snowflakes and Christmas disk sets:

The Cookie Press and 12 Disks: