Second-Stab Saturday: Girl Scout cookies with a squirt gun!

Today, we are playing with our new toys!

The original Girl Scout cookies ½ cup butter ½ cup sugar 1 tsp baking powder ¼ tsp salt* 1 egg 1 tbsp milk ½ tsp vanilla 1½ cups flour† Additional sugar for sprinkling Heat oven to 375°. Have baking sheets lined with ungreased paper. Cream the butter sugar, baking powder, and salt until light and fluffy. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla. Beat until well-whipped. Mix in the flour. Place the cookies into a piping bag or a sandwich bag with a corner snipped off. Pipe small cookies onto the pan. Sprinkle them with sugar and bake 7-9 minutes. *Only add this if butter is unsalted. †The original recipe uses 1 cup of flour, but that has been too runny every time I tried it. Source: Girl Scouts

Just for fun, I bought a cookie press. If you've never seen one of these things before, it is basically a squirt gun for cookie dough. If your cookie dough would burst out of a piping bag, you put it in one of these instead.

When I bought it, I was far too excited to realize that I was accidentally purchasing one of those cheaply-made gadgets that only briefly grace our homes before moving on to the landfill. But while this thing feels like it could fall apart at any second, it has held up so far.

Of course, we had to pick a cookie recipe to put into it. Some readers may remember that when we made the original Girl Scout cookies, they had a bit of a wardrobe malfunction. The cookies', um, distinctive appearance caused an unacceptable amount of amusement in the house, which naturally meant we have permanently added the recipe to our box of cards. Here is a visual reminder:

I am trying to be a mature adult. I am trying to be a mature adult. I am trying to be a mature adult.

But squeezing cookie dough out of a slippery sandwich bag is tedious and annoying. And so, I fitted my new cookie gun with a plain round stencil and made a panful of delightfully pointy cookies. 

I should note that I had no idea how to use this thing when I unboxed it. I understood the basic premise, but not the specifics of operation. The instructions were a bit unclear and suprisingly jargon-heavy, but I found this delightful video on Youtube which looked like someone animated it in 2009:

Well that tells me all I need to know.

Our first attempts came were misshapen, and we returned them to the bowl to try again. I had thought a cookie squirter was as foolproof as a cheese shredder, but it takes a bit of practice. However, it's not too finicky. You would get the knack before you finished piping out the first panload. And once you figure out how to use it (which, again, doesn't take long at all), you can squirt a batch of cookies in less than a minute.

Unfortunately, our cookies lost their titillating tips in the oven and came out depressingly normal. I have never been so disappointed by perfection.

We do not tolerate bowdlerization in this house.

I piped a batch of cookies out of a sandwich bag just to see whether the dough or the caulker was at fault. They came out with perfect points. So clearly, some things need to be done by hand. If I wanted to launch A Youtube Of Cookrye, these could be my first "demonetization bait."

While we had the dough in a bag, I decided to try some other shapes. The spirals came out cute (if smaller than I expected). The rings would have been nice, but I didn't know that you must watch them really carefully to prevent burns.

Of course, I couldn't resist trying some of the other stencils in the box. This little heart in a wreath came out unexpectedly cute.

Another stencil that looked like a random scattering of lines produced some unexpectedly pretty geometric cookies. But I think that for this particular recipe, the hand-piped ones are by far the most, um, visually arresting.

Of course, no one really needs a cookie squirt gun. But they're almost as fun as a waffle iron. And if you keep your eye out, you can get one for less than $20. However, if you want your cookies to have those perfect and ever-so-censorable pointy tips, you will need to do them by hand.