Spritz cookies

Flo Braker – remember that name. I’ll be coming back to her recipes often on the blog because they’re brilliant and simple, which is exactly how I like them. This is one of them – delicate, buttery spritz cookies. Here’s your chance to turn the kitchen into a little cookie factory and spend a fun afternoon baking with the children. If you have a cookie press, you can make the kind of beautifully shaped cookies you may have only seen in bakery before. Be warned – it’s addictive ;).

Makes 3 baking trays of cookies.

Ingredients for spritz cookies:

• 225 g butter
• ½ – ⅔ cup caster sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 290 g plain flour
• 2 egg yolks, from large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp lemon extract
• ¼ tsp almond extract

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the extracts and beat again. Add the flour and salt and mix until thoroughly combined.

Working in batches, fill a cookie press* with the dough and press the cookies onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, leaving some space between them. While you are shaping one batch, keep the remaining dough in the fridge.

Bake at 180°C for approximately 12–14 minutes, rotating the baking tray during baking so that the cookies bake evenly. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

*The cookies can also be piped onto the baking tray using a piping bag.

Enjoy!