How's your Spritzgeback.

As we swing into the Christmas season, I have got blog ideas lined up for the entire month. Thursdays are going to be Christmas cookie day. What’s your favorite Christmas cookie and do you think that I’m going to write about it here? You’ll have to check in every week and see. 

The Spritz cookie has its origins the same place as I do - Germany. I don’t know how long the Loehmer family was in Germany, but the Spritz cookie has been there since the 1500’s. These cookies get their name from the German word Spritzgeback.  Geback is baked and spritz? Well, that means to squirt.

Now before you swear that you will never eat a Spritz cookie again, think about it? Have you ever made Spritz cookies or seen someone do it? If the dough isn’t just right, it can squirt out of the cookie press. I know mine does sometimes.

A lot of people don’t like making them because, as just mentioned, that dough has to be just the right consistency or it doesn’t come out of the press right and you end up with a mess.

I’m no genius at this, but I have found that the key is temperature. And not just the dough. The press and the pans and everything else that comes in contact with that dough needs to be slightly on the cool side. The more you handle those things, the warmer they get and then the squirting starts.

For better or worse, here’s the recipe I use:

1 cup butter or margarine

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 ¼ cups flour

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp baking powder

Cream the first four ingredients, then gradually add the flour, salt and baking powder. Recipes always say to sift the flour and other dry ingredients together before adding them to the moist stuff. I never do that, I hate to dirty another bowl. I just dump the salt, soda or whatever else on top of the first bunch of flour I add and kind of work it in. Alton Brown, I am not. 

Anyway, oh, yea, preheat oven to 375 degrees. I never do that either. It’s a wonder anything I bake ever turns out. That first batch just has to bake a little longer while the oven heats up.

Ok, maybe this sharing cookie recipes once a week was a mistake. Yea, definitely, coz I’m not going to be able to tell you how long I bake these things. I just keep checking them until they’re done.

Yikes. I’ll have to try to be better next week.