Oh the memories of real homemade Christmas cookies
For the first twenty odd years of my life, my great-grandmother made a variety of cookies and shipped them up to us (Virginia to Rhode Island) in two Christmas cookie tins. They were a child’s dream: Hershey Kiss cookies, jelly sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, butter pecan cookies, and ginger cookies. You could taste the love in every cookie.
Oh man, I’m tearing up now…I so miss her. Unfortunately she had passed away around 2000. She was the greatest great-gramma anyone could ask for.
You may need to tweak the amount of liquid. More liquid makes for softer cookies. My mother’s version were very hard and crunchy. I prefer them to be moister. Hers were quite small; I like them a bit larger, perhaps 2".
My mom does this! The freezer is stuffed with sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, and butter spritz shapes (with colorful sugar crystals on top). The spritz cookies are made with an aluminum press she got when she was in college. It has lots of different shapes, and a few piping tips too.
Gotta revise this. I got the electric press out yesterday, made up some spritz dough, then read the instructions which said not to use refrigerated dough. Well, what were supposed to be wreaths, xmas trees, etc., came out as amorphous blobs. Tasty enough, but not attractive. Now I remember why I disliked this thing last year, also. Into the “sell” bin it goes. Back to slicing a cold log and decorating the slices.
Mom’s old cookie press uses room temperature dough; in general, the shapes plop out quite neatly (assuming you have the die facing in the right direction, which isn’t always easy to tell because some of the engraved markings have worn away over the years).
