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Let's just start with the very important lesson: when making cookies in a shared and somewhat haphazardly supplied kitchen, it is very important to count one's cookie sheets and make additions / borrow accordingly before one makes 2.33 bar batches of spritzer dough, which must be pressed directly onto a hot cookie sheet from the cookie press. (I should take a picture of mine, which is old, metal, and scary-looking). To make a long story short, after two hours and about twenty rounds of pressing, baking, checking, removing, de-sheeting, and re-pressing cookies on a ten inch pizza pan, I had a minor meltdown and begged my erstwhile assistant to take over while I literally cooled my head. Let this be a lesson to, well, me.
What I cooked: Spritzar cookies, aka almond shortbread from a cookie gun. ( Recipe and pictures below cut. )
How much it cost: I did not keep good track of this one! I will find the receipts. However, see below for notes on my ridiculously expensive natural food coloring, which doubled the price of the recipe.
How it worked: Mix, mix, load spritzer into cookie gun, deploy cookies, bake. That all went pretty well: the major failure was the unloading/cooling step, in which lack of space and cooling racks meant I stacked the cookies to cool them, and so they're soft and kind of sticky instead of crisp and crunchy. My mother has instructed me to clear an end table or other flat surface and cool these in a single layer on a cut-open brown paper bag next time.
Taste: The yellow food coloring had a strong tumeric taste which did not go away with cooking; the beet juice cookies, despite shaping fail, had this nice fruity note. Spritzer's general almond buttery-ness makes them my favorite xmas cookie, hands-down. I did use a grainy fair-trade sugar instead of Dixie Crystals, and that did affect the texture somewhat, to the degree that next year I might look for something less turbinado-y or pulverize my sugar in my coffee grinder first. The white whole wheat was weird and definitely tasted whole-wheaty, more than a 50/50 cut of white all-purpose and whole wheat pastry flour would have. But it was what I had on hand.
Storage: Note to self never to put these away while still warm. Oops. Otherwise, shelf-stable for about a week in tupperware.
SO, about that natural food coloring. ( Reviews of India Tree natural food coloring and making your own from beets, neither successful )
This one was definitely a cookie rough draft, rather than a cookie victory, but you know the nice thing about cookie rough drafts? People still eat the heck out of cookie rough drafts.
What I cooked: Spritzar cookies, aka almond shortbread from a cookie gun. ( Recipe and pictures below cut. )
How much it cost: I did not keep good track of this one! I will find the receipts. However, see below for notes on my ridiculously expensive natural food coloring, which doubled the price of the recipe.
How it worked: Mix, mix, load spritzer into cookie gun, deploy cookies, bake. That all went pretty well: the major failure was the unloading/cooling step, in which lack of space and cooling racks meant I stacked the cookies to cool them, and so they're soft and kind of sticky instead of crisp and crunchy. My mother has instructed me to clear an end table or other flat surface and cool these in a single layer on a cut-open brown paper bag next time.
Taste: The yellow food coloring had a strong tumeric taste which did not go away with cooking; the beet juice cookies, despite shaping fail, had this nice fruity note. Spritzer's general almond buttery-ness makes them my favorite xmas cookie, hands-down. I did use a grainy fair-trade sugar instead of Dixie Crystals, and that did affect the texture somewhat, to the degree that next year I might look for something less turbinado-y or pulverize my sugar in my coffee grinder first. The white whole wheat was weird and definitely tasted whole-wheaty, more than a 50/50 cut of white all-purpose and whole wheat pastry flour would have. But it was what I had on hand.
Storage: Note to self never to put these away while still warm. Oops. Otherwise, shelf-stable for about a week in tupperware.
SO, about that natural food coloring. ( Reviews of India Tree natural food coloring and making your own from beets, neither successful )
This one was definitely a cookie rough draft, rather than a cookie victory, but you know the nice thing about cookie rough drafts? People still eat the heck out of cookie rough drafts.
