The other day I made a hot drink with Alpine Spiced Apple Cider mix. As I looked at the mix I thought oh my. I could use this powder to flavor cookies!

The beauty of it is its simplicity. I made my favorite vanilla spritz recipe, and added this mix at the end. Oh wow. Deeeelightful! The cider flavor really pops. The texture is soft and mildly chewy.

When I made this recipe my bestie was one of my tasters. She said, “Wow these are amazing, but how about a dollop of buttercream frosting on them?” I said, “Ooh great idea! I could sandwich them!” But the more I thought about it, that dollop sounded epic. So dipping to get a dollop is what we’re going to do here!

I actually adore dipping cookies. Dipping bite-sized spritz cookies is a neat way to add complexity to the flavor and texture. While normally I sandwich cookies to achieve this, when I did the Veggie Cookies with Buttercream “Dip” recipe a few years ago ( https://creativecookiepress.com/2022/11/28/veggie-tray-spritz-cookies/ ), I realized that was a really fun way to add an icing pop to cookies. I mean, we don’t sandwich potato chips with dip, do we? No! We dip them!

Dipping has several benefits:

  1. It’s easier than sandwiching
  2. People control their own amount of frosting to their liking
  3. People can decide if they even want frosting! People love options. 😉

For pressing these cookies, we have quite a few disk sets with shapes that are cute for fall. I chose a few disks from Halloween, Leaves & Trees, Thanksgiving, and Woodland. We have 367 disk shapes, so there are plenty to choose from!

Our website has all of our 300+ 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.

🎉 “Tis the Season!” 15% off SALE❗
🎄Make edible art for the Holidays, because baking should be fun!
Discount on our cookie press disks, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, luster dusts, cookie cutters & baking accessories. Sale November 26 – December 10, 2025, on our website and Etsy shops ONLY! (Links above) Sale excludes holiday gift sets and our recipe book.

Let’s bake!

Impress! Vanilla-Honey Spritz (with Apple Cider Mix)

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 & 1/2 Tablespoons vanilla extract
1 egg
4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

4 packets of Alpine Spiced Apple Cider mix: 6 Tablespoons for the dough and the rest for sprinkling on top of pressed cookies before baking

Note: For a gluten-free option simply replace the flour with a 1:1 substitute like King Arthur’s Gluten Free Measure for Measure.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Using a big wire whisk is a good way to mix them evenly. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter very well. I say this in every post so sorry for being repetitive! Creaming your butter until it is fluffy is the key to great spritz cookies. I like to pretend I’m making frosting and use the highest setting on my mixer. Butter turns a slightly lighter color when it’s creamed well.

Add the sugar and cream it very well again. Then incorporate the honey, the vanilla extract, and egg, and re-cream the mixture after each new addition. Next add the flour mixture a little at a time, mixing on a slow speed until a soft dough forms. Perfect spritz dough has a soft malleable texture that is not too sticky or too stiff. It should not stick to your hands. You can always knead it by hand at the end if your mixer is leaving any flour unincorporated. Smooshing it into a play-dough like texture by hand is actually pretty fun.  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. Now add the 6 tablespoons of cider mix to the dough.

**Tip: I added the 6 tablespoons of cider mix at the end, after making my dough, but honestly you could probably add it into the flour mixture to save a step!

Get your disks and pack your dough into your cookie press barrel, using the back of a spoon to press the air bubbles out as you add dough. This helps create consistent pressure to avoid mis-shaped cookies.

Place the disk in the bottom ring, attach to your press, and start pressing onto an un-greased cookie sheet. Use a consistent rhythm to keep the shapes a uniform size. It’s not at all uncommon for your first few cookies to be mis-shaped, as pressure needs to build in the barrel to make consistent shapes. It’s totally ok! Just throw them back in the bowl to be re-pressed. If you’re still having trouble pressing (mis-shaped cookies, trouble sticking to the pan, etc) press one cookie into the air and wipe it off and toss back into the bowl to re-set your pressure in the press. You can also refrigerate your cookie sheets for 5 minutes if sticking is an issue. (There are more troubleshooting tips on the Troubleshooting and Decorating Tips page- see the top menu on the blog homepage.)

For the apples, tap down the centers to make the surface flatter. The roughness is just part of the process of pressing! A simple tap smoothes them out. The photo on the right shows the difference. Notice in the above photos there are two different apple shapes. The one with the right-leaning leaves is from our Thanksgiving disk set, and the other is from our Fruits disk set.

All of these shapes pressed easily. Keep your shapes small enough that they keep their definition. If they’re too big they become blobs.

If using a one-click-per-cookie type press remember that you don’t always have to follow that guideline. Some shapes may take more or less than one click and that’s ok! Cookies don’t have to come out in even “clicks”. One click, half a click, it doesn’t matter. A press (any press) is a dough pump (it’s kind of like a caulking gun). It’s simply a mechanism for pumping dough out, however many (or few) “clicks” it takes. Again, you can read all about that in the Troubleshooting and Decorating Tips page if you’re new to this.

Once your cookies are pressed, sprinkle the tops with the cider powder to give them a nice flavor pop. Just tap it off of the edge of a spoon.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for 6-9 minutes or until the edges begin to brown.  Check them early and often as all ovens are different, and spritz can brown quickly once they start to go. Do a test of just a few cookies first to get your timing right for desired doneness.

Remember, small cookies bake faster and large cookies take longer. Keep that in mind when pressing. Group like sizes together if you can to avoid burned or under-baked cookies. Do NOT overbake this recipe! Once they puff up, look dry and not shiny, and start to crackle a bit on top they are done. These don’t have to brown much, just puff up and have that dry “set” look. They get crunchy when you bake them longer. Honestly, we all preferred them just barely done. 

Let them sit just a few minutes on the cookie sheet before you move them to a cooling rack.

This recipe makes about 110 cookies, depending on how big or small your chosen shapes are.

I placed candy eyes on my Woodland critters and the turkeys but you could leave them off and they’d look just as cute. Black icing dots would also do the trick. Look on Etsy for good deals on 3/16″ candy eyes (also called icing eyes).

Our last step is to make the buttercream! That’s the super easy part.

Buttercream Dip

½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened (not melted)

2 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 Tablespoons heavy cream

Cinnamon, sprinkles, or sanding sugars to add however you like!

For this buttercream dip I used my favorite decorating buttercream, made a little thinner than usual. Just combine all of the ingredients with an electric mixer. Whip it and whip it until it is light and fluffy! I love a good fluffy buttercream. This one is very vanilla and very creamy. My kids always hover waiting for me to be done mixing so they can have the beaters and spatula. 

I left one portion plain vanilla, another I added cinnamon to (just add as much as tastes good to you), and I added fall leaf sprinkles to the third. Get creative and add whatever makes you happy. In my original Veggies & Dip post I added orange and green sanding sugars to make it look like ranch dip. Try adding jimmies, nonpareils, colored sanding sugars, and cute sprinkles. 😂 My favorite with the apple cider cookies is definitely the cinnamon version. It complements so well!

Don’t forget to make a cup of hot cider to go with your cookies! Then dip away to your heart’s content.

Happy baking & dipping!

~Susie

Disk Designer/Co-Owner at Impress! Bakeware, LLC

Our website has all of our 300+ 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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