This easy recipe promises delightful cookies that are ideal for holiday trays, coffee dates, or as a sweet gift from your kitchen. Bake a batch and watch them disappear as quickly as they came out of the oven!
Table of Contents
🗝️ Key takeaways
- German spritz cookies are simple, delicious, and so much fun to make with the whole family.
- These decorative butter cookies are the perfect addition to your Christmas cookie platter this holiday season and make great gifts.
- The key to preventing dry, crumbly cookies is to remove them from the oven before the edges of the cookies start to brown.
Classic spritz cookies are delicate and buttery with hints of sweet vanilla and almond flavors.
The melt-in-your-mouth texture is impossible to resist—they’ll disappear from your cookie tin faster than you can say, "Merry Christmas!"
🧾 Ingredients
This is an overview of the ingredients. You'll find the full measurements and instructions in the green recipe card (printable) at the bottom of the page.
📖 Variations
- If the grocery store is already sold out of unsalted butter, you can use salted butter and simply omit the extra salt from the recipe.
- Add a bit of paste or gel food coloring to your spritz cookie dough for a pretty pop of color!
- Replace the almond extract with more vanilla extract if you’re not a fan of almond flavor.
- There are so many different shapes you can make. Form spritz cookies into Christmas trees, snowmen, stars, flowers, or candy canes.
- Decorate your cookies with any type of festive sprinkles that you like, or use colored sugar crystals before baking for texture!
- Dip your baked cookies in melted chocolate to make ‘em extra tasty. You can use milk chocolate, dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, or white chocolate chips—pick your favorite!
🔪 Instructions
This is an overview of the instructions. Full instructions are in the green recipe card at the bottom of the page.
- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Then, stir in the flour, salt, egg, extracts, and food coloring.
- Pack the cookie dough into your cookie press.
- Press your cookie shapes onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
- Add sprinkles and bake.
🍴 Equipment
Spritz cookies get their unique shape from a cookie press—you'll need one to quickly form the decorative dough designs.
- cookie press
- electric mixer or stand mixer
- mixing bowls
- measuring cups
- measuring spoons
🥫 How to store spritz cookies
If (by some Christmas miracle) you have leftover spritz cookies, store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week.
You can freeze German spritz cookies in an airtight container or freezer bag for up to one month.
Simply thaw frozen cookies at room temperature until they're soft enough to enjoy again.
💭 Things to know
Expert Tip: If you don't have a spritz cookie press, use a pastry bag or piping bag fitted with a large open star tip instead. Add one or two teaspoons of heavy cream to the cookie dough if it's too tough to pipe.
- Butter has to be softened to create a smooth, creamy mixture. Let it sit at room temperature for at least an hour before you get started.
- Measure your flour carefully—adding too much to your cookie dough will create crumbly, dense cookies.
- The soft dough is fragile, so be gentle when shaping your cookies and placing them on the sheet pan.
- Adjust the baking time according to the size of your cookies. If your cookies are on the larger side, add an extra 1-2 minutes of baking time.
- There’s no need to grease your baking sheets or line 'em with parchment paper since these are very buttery cookies. However, you can use a silicone mat so they don't pick up flavor from the pan's patina.
- I know 5-8 minutes is not long, but trust me—it’s all they need! Remove them from the oven once they set and lose their glossy shine but before they turn golden brown.
- Immediately—and carefully—transfer the baked cookies to a wire rack to cool. This will prevent any "carry-over" cooking!
- Use a drop of corn syrup to help attach other edible decorations to your baked cookies, like a larger, decorative sprinkle.
👩🍳 FAQs
Spritzgebäck cookies (called spritz cookies for short) are a traditional German butter cookie. It used to be a popular cookie to make during the Christmas season in Europe. Then, many of our grandparents brought the recipe here to America, and we grew up enjoying them!
The name comes from the German word "spritzen," which means “to squirt.” That’s because spritz cookies are made by pressing soft, buttery dough through a cookie press or bag, making various intricate shapes.
Not quite. Spritz cookies and shortbread cookies both contain flour, sugar, and lots of butter. However, shortbread cookies don’t contain eggs, so they’re drier and more crumbly than spritz cookies.
It's easy! You can wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to a day. Let the covered dough warm up on the counter a bit to soften before shaping and baking.
Yep! Cookie dough freezes well. Wrap the log of dough tightly and store in the freezer for up to one month. Let it thaw in the fridge overnight.
You can also shape the cookies, flash-freeze them, then put them in a bag or container. Bake from frozen, adding an extra minute or two as needed.
📚 Related recipes
- Lavender Shortbread Cookies are crisp, crumbly, and buttery with a hint of lavender—perfect for showers, afternoon teas, or holiday parties!
- Chewy and soft, Bakery Sugar Cookies have a sweet, classic flavor everyone loves. Include these on your holiday tray this year.
- Peppermint Blossom Cookies are one of the prettiest and tastiest Christmas cookie recipes, with a white chocolate peppermint kiss right in the center.
- Hawaiian Shortbread are buttery, melt-in-your-mouth cookies that are full of macadamia nuts.
📞 The last word
If you click on the number of servings in the recipe card you can adjust the measurements up or down for the exact number of servings you need.
If you love this recipe please comment below and give it 5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖 Recipe
Spritz Cookies
Print Pin Recipe Save Recipe Rate RecipeIngredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon almond extract
- food color, colored sugar, sprinkles, and decorations as desired
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed
- Stir in flour, salt, egg, almond extract and a few drops of food color if desired.
- Place dough in cookie press.
- Hold the cookie press perpendicular to your cookie sheet and press out the cookies carefully.
- Form desired shapes on ungreased cookie sheet.
- Decorate with sprinkles or sugar as desired.
- Bake 5 to 8 minutes or until set but not brown.
- Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.
Notes
-
- Butter has to be softened to create a smooth, creamy mixture. Let it sit at room temperature for at least an hour before you get started.
-
- Measure your flour carefully—adding too much to your cookie dough will create crumbly, dense cookies.
-
- The soft dough is fragile, so be gentle when shaping your cookies and placing them on the sheet pan.
-
- Adjust the baking time according to the size of your cookies. If your cookies are on the larger side, add an extra 1-2 minutes of baking time.
-
- There’s no need to grease your baking sheets or line 'em with parchment paper since these are very buttery cookies. However, you can use a silicone mat so they don't pick up flavor from the pan's patina.
-
- Immediately—and carefully—transfer the baked cookies to a wire rack to cool. This will prevent any "carry-over" cooking!
-
- Use a drop of corn syrup to help attach other edible decorations to your baked cookies, like a larger, decorative sprinkle.
Nutrition Facts
Nutrition information is estimated as a courtesy. If using for medical purposes, please verify information using your own nutritional calculator. Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
This recipe has been tested several times. If you choose to use other ingredients, or change the technique in some way, the results may not be the same.
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