Brown Sugar Spritz Cookies: or, Buying a press to go with the instructions

I didn't want to wait for our cookie press to break before getting a better one.

Brown Sugar Spritz Cookies ½ cup shortening 1 cup light brown sugar ¼ tsp salt 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla 2¼ tsp sifted flour Heat oven to 400°. Have ungreased baking sheets, a thin metal spatula, and a cooling rack ready. Beat the shortening until soft and creamy. Add sugar and salt, beat until light. Then add the egg and vanilla, beat until well-whipped. Mix all but about two or three tablespoons of flour. If dough is too sticky, add the remaining flour. You can also add a little more if necessary. Put into cookie press. Then press the cookies onto the ungreased baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes (mine were done in about six), or until golden at the edges. Immediately after removing from the oven, use the spatula to transfer the hot cookies to the cooling rack. These cookies are better the day after baking. Source: Mirro cookie press instructions

Source: Mirro cookie press instructions

As Thanksgiving approaches, the baking aisle and other parts of the store are getting worryingly empty. In earlier, happier times, I would have figured it was the natural result of the holiday baking surge. But this year, I've been looking at the bare shelves and asking "Is this just the holidays, or are people quietly stockpiling before the next president launches a trade war?" 

And so, because sometimes new toys are entertaining in times of distress, I bought a Mirro press to go with my Mirro instructions. Now I only need someone to get me a Dormeyer stand mixer to go with the Dormeyer recipe book. When I turned the press' handle, it glided on its screw-threads. The whole thing felt like quality in my hands. Also, it came with little stencils for doggies and butterflies! I couldn't wait to make dog-shaped cookies.

The doggie is right under the press handle.

I only made these cookies so I could try out my exciting new toy, but I had high hopes for the recipe. I imagined they would be like a cuter-looking version of the slice-and-bake blondies from Mrs. George Thurn.

And so, we begin with brown sugar and shortening. Every recipe on this handout begins with shortening. Perhaps they were leery of overly moist butter in those days, too.

After halving so many recipes, I have gotten unexpectedly good at splitting eggs. These days, it's a trivial task. I used to put the other egg half into a frying pan for a quick mid-recipe snack, but these days I freeze it for when I'm making another half-recipe later. That's why our egg looked like this:

I forgot to defrost the egg, but figured that letting the mixer kick it around the room-temperature batter would melt it fast enough-- like when you stir butter into hot spaghetti. Sure enough, the egg was thawed and perfectly mixed after about a minute.

After our dough was floured and ready, it was time to bring in our beautiful, high-quality cookie press. We giddily learned that this new(ly acquired) press can hold a lot more dough than the first one. It nearly held all the dough at once.

Unfortunately, our cookies did not want to stick to the pan. I don't know whether to blame the recipe, the cookie press, or good old-fashioned operator error. But I had to pry about half of our cookies off of the press without bending them out of shape. Some shapes seemed to work better than others. Almost all of the butterflies and about two thirds of the stars stayed on the pan when I lifted the press off. But most of the cookies came out like this:

I also tried the tiny star, but the cookies all like ragged plops (though at least they all stuck to the pan). Even though I don't care about "presentationality," I reloaded them into the squirter. I think this tiny star stencil must have a specific use that I don't know about, because it makes ugly cookies.

I hate to say it, but I like the cheaper cookie squirter more than this one. If you ignore how the cheaper press feels like its little ratcheter could snap at any minute, it is a lot easier to use. In fact, if the cheap one proves durable, I may let the older one find a new home.

But when the vintage press worked, it worked really well. It made the cutest Christmas trees (when they actually stayed on the pan). Unfortunately, the doggie cookies I was so excited about turned into blobs. The butterflies were not much better. Someone said the dogs might actually be donkeys since those are a big part of Christmas iconography. But I don't think it matters. They look like misshapen capital H's.

The swirly starburst one is my favorite.

When the cookies were freshly baked, they were hard. Like, they put your teeth were peril. The next day, they had softened to an astonishingly perfect texture. I didn't even put them in a container. I just left them out on a plate. The day-long ripening period makes these cookies perfect when you have everyone coming over for the holidays. You can finish all the baking and cleanup the day before, and forget about them while you're frantically preparing on the morning of "the big day."

After softening overnight, these cookies were really good. They tasted exactly like I hoped they would. But while the molasses cookies had been far better than I hoped, today's cookies were merely exactly as good as I hoped. Not every recipe from an instruction manual can be a magically blissful. If I hadn't picked the molasses recipe first, this one would not have seemed like a lesser experience.