Today, for the first time, we are getting spritz cookies from somewhere besides cookie press manuals!
| Chocolate Spritz Cookies 3 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted 1 cup (½ pound) butter ¼ tsp salt ½ tsp vanilla 3 egg yolks 2½ cups sifted flour Heat oven to 400°. Have ungreased cookie sheets, a thin metal spatula, and cooling racks ready. Cream the butter, salt, vanilla, and sugar. Add the egg yolks and beat well. Then add the chocolate and beat very well. When the mixture is light and airy, gradually add the flour, gently beating only to mix. Put the dough into a cookie press and press it onto the ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until darkened at the edges. Immediately upon removing them from the oven, use the metal spatula to get them off the pan and onto the rack. If you don't have a cookie press, you can shape the dough any way you like. I particularly like rolling it into balls, rolling these in sugar, placing them on the pan and pressing my index finger across them.
Source: Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974
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| Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974 |
Yes, instead of getting recipes from manufacturer instruction sheets, we are consulting our dearly beloved copy of Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts. Some readers may recall that I asked a friend of mine to make a duct tape jacket for it that says THE HOLY BIBLE.
Every time I follow the instructions in this text, I always find happiness. Today's joyous experience begins with creamed butter and sugar with melted chocolate on top.
I had a few misgivings as we mixed the first round of ingredients together. The batter was more "chocolate-tinted" than chocolate.
The batter tasted a lot milder than I hoped. But to Maida Heatter's credit, the dough handled really easily. It wasn't too gloppy, nor was it too stiff.
In preparation for when my cheap cookie press finally snaps, I decided to try some other ways of getting pretty designs onto the cookies. I took this random bowl with designs molded into the glass, and pressed it on top of dough balls. I first rolled the dough in sugar so the bowl wouldn't stick.
The resulting cookies had a cute design stamped on top, but it didn't look as nice as I hoped. Up close, they looked pretty. Otherwise, the cookies just had a random bump in the middle.
These cookies were super easy to press out. In fact, I didn't need to remove a single misshapen dud from the pan. This is a relatively new experience for me, but I wasn't surprised. Maida Heatter's recipes always work. I only hand-shaped some of the cookies are hand-shaped so I could see what non-cookie-press options work well with this particular recipe. I hate when lack of specific gadgets gets in the way of chocolate.
These cookies taste a lot more... polite than I expected. They're very good with tea, but they're not as rich as I hoped. I think they'd be a nice light finish after a really heavy dinner. But these cookies are not my favorite recipe from The Holy Bible. They're not bad, but I doubt I will put a lot of splatters onto this page.
I had one of those bowls for a while, too. They really were everywhere for a while. I wonder how those cookies would be if they were sprinkled with cocoa powder (or cocoa powder and sugar). Really I'm just trying to come up with a way to add more chocolate without messing up the dough. Maybe just plop a chocolate candy of your choice on top while baking?
ReplyDeleteThey really must have been EVERYwhere! I accidentally dropped one of the ones here. I went to a thrift store to get a small glass bowl to replace it, and found a perfect match!
DeleteI'm thinking I might kind of go with how mild they are, and press a white-chocolate Kiss into them right out of the oven like I'm making those peanut butter blossom cookies.