Third up and most popular around Christmas at our house are Spritzgebäck…. although they have always just been called “s-cookies” in our family.
| American Recipe | German Recipe (courtesy of Dr. Oetker) |
| 2 1/2 cups (300g) Flour 1/2 tsp Salt 1 Cup (225g) Butter 3/4 Cup (150g) Sugar 1 Egg (or 3 Yolks) 3/4 tsp Almond Extract | 500g (4.2 cups) Flour 1 pinch of Salt 250g (1.1 cups) Butter 250g (1.2 cups) Sugar 3 egg yolks (medium) 2 packets of Vanilla Sugar Lemon or Orange Zest 2 tsp backing powder 1 tbsp Milk |
| Cream butter and sugar. Add egg, almond extract, flour and salt gradually. Press a small amount of dough through cookie press onto baking sheet. Bake 400F in a conventional oven or 375F for convection for 6 to 8 Minutes. Watch carefully that they don’t turn too brown. “Always use butter and I often double the recipe. This has always been one of our favorite holiday cookies” – Alice Beckman | Preaheat the oven to 350 for conventional or 320 for convection. Stir butter or margarine smoothly in a mixing bowl with a mixer (mixing attachments) at the highest setting. Gradually stir in the sugar, vanilla sugar, egg yolk, salt and lemon zest. Stir until the sugar has dissolved and a bound mass is formed. Mix the flour with the baking powder and stir in 2/3 of it alternately with the milk at medium speed. Knead in the remaining flour on the work surface. Press the dough in small portions through a meat grinder with a special attachment, cut into pieces of any length and place on the baking sheet. Bake. Pastries must still be light colored, do not over brown. Insert: middle rack Baking time: about 11 minutes |
Interestingly… an older recipe card also card also called for 3 egg yolks… I wonder if this was due to the high fat scares in the 70s and 80s.
An in depth ratio calculator (In the style of Jürgen Krauss) of my original recipe and a few others is available here.