T‘is the season of itchy sweaters, holiday cheer and that one extra cookie splurge. And in my family, there’s nothing like holiday tradition. A classic, Christmas staple in my house is the Spritz cookie.
It all originated with a risky purchase my mom made, circa 1998: a contraption with seemingly no purpose. Later, we learned it was called a Spritz Cookie Press, and besides looking similar to an AK-47 (now where’s the holiday cheer in that?), the barrel-shaped novelty worked wonders.
Loading the tool with dough, we only had to press down on the top handle and a cookie would pop out from the other side. With several detachable ends, the cookies could come out in several holiday shapes. Christmas trees, bells, poinsettias – you name it, the cookie press could make it.
Fast forward 15 years, and we’re still using the original cookie press my mom bought over a decade ago. And though we’ve added another press to our kitchen, the Spritz cookie, in all its cookie press glory, remains one of my favorite holiday traditions.

Follow a few easy steps, and you’ll be on your way to an authentic Atasoy Christmas.

You’ll need:

Spritz Cookie Press (Look in any cooking store)

1-½  cup softened butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon almond extract

Food-coloring package

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Red and green sparkle sprinkles

Before you start, make sure to preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. After setting the correct heat, begin by creaming the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Since butter can take hours to soften on its own, go ahead and set it in the microwave for around 30 seconds.

Once the butter is soft, it should be easy to combine with the sugar. As base ingredients, there should be no clumps, which can happen if the butter is not soft enough, so make sure to mix the two together well. You can always use an electric mixer, which is much quicker, but I prefer a basic spoon to mix by hand.

After thoroughly mixing together the butter and sugar, add the rest of the liquid ingredients into the bowl. Be careful not to measure out the vanilla and almond extracts above the bowl in case of spill. (Unfortunately, I made the mistake of spilling a whole tablespoon of vanilla extract into my first batch and was forced to start over.)

Once you have mixed in all the liquid ingredients, it’s time to decide if you want to make one color of cookies or multiple. For my batch, I split the batter in half for red and green in the spirit of the holidays. It was harder to evenly split the ingredients up, but I gave it my best guess and went from there. Now split the batter into two different bowls and add the respective food coloring to each set, before flour. It is incredibly important to add the dye before the flour while the mix is still a liquid, or else the dry ingredient will make it difficult to spread the coloring. After splitting, remember to split the flour and baking soda between the two bowls as well!

Now comes the fun part: picking the cookie shapes. I picked a Christmas tree, wreath and a few other designs for the cookies, but there are up to a dozen different filter shapes. Alternating between the red and green dough, screw on the design and start shooting cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet. After your sheet is loaded with cookies, be sure to put the sprinkles on the unbaked dough, so the glitter can attach to the cookies in the oven. Depending on your oven, bake for 6-8 minutes, then take the cookies out of the oven and wait for them to cool. Enjoy!
By Ashleigh Atasoy