Cookie Or Cream?

We gave Baby Fox his first Oreo cookie a few days ago, and after three rounds, he's decided that he's...a cream first kind of guy.

Which are you?

When I could eat Oreos (they were my vice, like I could eat a whole package without batting an eye) I was a cookie girl, I like the sandwich as a whole and no other way. Not dunked in milk, just plain and simple.

Spritz Cookies

With cookies of course! Remember all those cookies I made last weekend? Well I'm making more this weekend and I'm sharing the recipe this time . Remember this recipe? Where I explained America's Test Kitchen? Well that's where this recipe is from, so if you want the full explaination, go there, see the "*" note.

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. Click here for my disclosure page.

Okay onto the recipe.

Spritz Cookies

Ingredients:

1 Large Egg Yolk
1 Tablespoon Heavy Whipping Cream
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 cup Unsalted Butter (2 sticks), softened (about 70°)
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon table salt (but if you salted butter, omit this)
2 Cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 Cookie Press (this one is highly rated, but on the expensive side, this one is half the price and well rated, this one is electric but my is it expensive)
Various cookie press shapes

What you do with it:

Sidenote: The recipe below has been doubled from above. I find that it's not worth my time to just make 1 batch at a time, as one batch only yields 2 cookie sheets worth of cookies. If you've ever had these cookies you eat at least 5 at a time...so they go pretty quickly.

Step 1: Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375°.

Step 2: In a small bowl, beat yolk, cream and vanilla with a fork until combined, set aside.

Step 3: In standing mixer put butter and sugar

Mix until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes. Scrape down bowl with rubber spatula (I did't add that tidbit the reciepe did).

Of course Baby Fox had to get in on the action, as soon as he heard the mixer turn on he runs up to me and says "doing?"

Step 4: With mixer running at medium speed, add yolk/cream mixture and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds. Scrape down bowl.

Step 4: With mixer running at low speed gradually beat in flour until combined. Scrape down bowl and give final stir with rubber spatula to ensure that there are no flour pockets.

sidenote: If you don't have these bowls you need to get them stat! They look like a bowl, but then you can fold them for easy dumping into your standing mixer

See the pinching action? Totally easy way to get your flour in the bowl without spilling everywhere, you're welcome!

Step 5: Using cookie press to form cookies, follow manufacturers instructions to fill. If you don't have cookie press you can use a pastry bag with a large tip on the end to form cookies.

Step 6: Press or pipe cookies onto ungreased baking sheet

Yet another side note. My cookie press is electric, which you can find here, or here. I have not tried either one of these, so use at your own risk. Mine is older than me and was passed down from my Grandma.

Step 7: No cookie is complete without some sprinkles right? Pour them on! I was being stingy because I didn't want to go to the store to get more sprinkles, but after I took this picture my Dad went and got some more, so later cookies have way more sprinkles.

Step 8: I do two cookie sheets at a time, and rotate the cookie sheets (top goes to the bottom rack, and vice versa), makes baking go a lot quicker and I'm not in the kitchen for so long. So yes I own a lot of cookie sheets for this reason.

Once you start eating these, you'll never want to stop. Seriously, they are so good, and they are small enough that you can pop them in your mouth...it's dangerous I tell ya!

Here is what 595 cookies look like all bagged up.

And there you have it. So go out and make some cookies for your friends and family! Hope you all have a great weekend and get all your last minute shopping done, I know I have some stuff to still find, hoping I get it today, so all I have to do is, wrap, wrap wrap!

Candy Corn Cookies

This past weekend we went to a Halloween party. I thought I would be festive and make this Candy Corn Cookie recipe. This particular has orange zest in it, if you don't want that flavor you could try this recipe, which is your basic sugar cookie recipe. I am going to have to try that one out next time.For this tutorial though, we're going to use the first recipe.

What you'll need:

• 1 cup butter room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons orange juice
• 2 teaspoons orange zest
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• orange gel food coloring (I used icing gel, found at Micheal's)
• yellow gel food coloring (I used icing gel, you can find them separately too)
• sanding sugar (I actually used crushed Sparkling Sugar)

Instructions

   1.   Preheat Oven to 375°.  Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

   2.  Zest Orange and squeeze orange for juice

   3.  Add the egg, orange juice, orange zest and salt.

   4.  Combine

   5.  Slowly add the flour and baking soda. Beat until combined.

   6.  Place parchment paper in loaf pan. If you don't have parchment paper, you can use plastic wrap.

   7.  Here comes the fun part. Divide the cookie dough into three portions.Add the first third of the dough to the loaf pan pressing it evenly in the bottom.

8.  Add a few drops of orange to the second third of dough and press that into the pan.

Thank you to the Mr. for helping me out, I actually made the orange last and didn't have orange (they had a copper that would have worked, but I'm OCD like that, I wanted bright orange) in my icing color pack, so I had to combine yellow and red, and my hand was getting tired of trying to mix them together.

   9.  Do the same thing and make yellow and press it into the pan.

From the side view this is what it will look like:

   10.  Wrap the cookie dough and refrigerate until firm. At least two hours or overnight.

   11.  Unwrap the cookie dough

 This picture is totally deceiving, I thought this would work, but in reality it didn't. 

I dumped it upside down, and then pulled on one of the corners.

   12.  Slice into 1/4 inch slices

   13.  Slice the dough into triangles.

Mr. wanted to get in on the fun too

  

14.  Put sugar into baggie and using rolling pin, or spoon or whatever to crush them a little smaller (you don't have to do this, but I figured since the cookies were so small that the sugar would be too big, in reality it wasn't so this step isn't totally necessary, but didn't realize that till after I crushed it, so I'm sharing my wealth of knowledge)

  Please ignore my chipping nail polish...there was no way to take this picture without showing you my nails, 

don't worry I took off the polish just after this picture was taken.

   15.  Dip one side of the cookie into the sanding sugar.

Okay let's get real for a second...this method takes WAY  too long, but it makes for a good picture right? In reality this is how I did it:

I took the whole row, put in sugar

Place on cookie sheet and then separate

and there you have it!

   16.  Bake for 7 to 10 minutes (I baked mine for 7 minutes 30 seconds). Cool on a cooling rack.

   17.  Enjoy!

 Yep I put this on a paper plate, I didn't have any cute Halloween plates, and I knew that I would probably never remember to bring my plate home with me...

Bet your wondering what we are for Halloween? You'll have to wait till Wednesday to find out! Now go out and make some cookies!