These are my favorite spritz cookies! Using a cookie press, shape this easy buttery cookie dough into intricate shapes and have fun decorating with sprinkles, chocolate, and chocolate chips. No cookie dough chilling required and the cookies freeze and ship wonderfully.
I originally published this recipe in 2018 and have since added new photos, a video tutorial, and additional success tips.
This is my go-to recipe for fun and festive spritz cookies.
What Are Spritz Cookies?
The base dough is very similar to my sugar cookies, butter cookies, and pinwheel cookies. Each are shaped a different way, and spritz cookies are shaped with a cookie press. They’re buttery and sweet and, with the right recipe, hold their intricate shape when baked. Spritz cookies are also similar to shortbread cookies, but spritz cookies usually contain an egg. Eggs help the spritz cookies hold their shape when baked, so they don’t crumble like shortbread cookies do.
The word “spritz” actually comes from the German word spritzen which means “to squirt.” This refers to squirting or pushing the cookie dough through a cookie press. I don’t know why, but I always associate the word spritz with “spritely” because spritz cookies remind me of something little spritely fairies would eat!
One reader, Julie, commented: “The cookies came out great, and tasted delicious! I’m very new to baking, so I ordered the OXO cookie press, read all of your tips, and was thrilled with the results. If I could make these, anyone can! I can’t wait to make these again! ★★★★★”
Another reader, Patti, commented: “I have been making spritz cookies forever. I saw that you were using the same cookie press that I have so I decided to try your recipe. This is the nicest my cookies have ever looked since I started baking them. ★★★★★”
What Is a Cookie Press?
I added a cookie press to my baking tools collection a few years ago. Inside this baking tool is a metal plate with a stenciled shape. A cookie press presses your cookie dough through the metal plate to create beautifully shaped cookies. It’s actually a lot easier than a rolling pin and cookie cutters!
- I recommend this OXO cookie press. This is not a sponsored post; I genuinely love this cookie press. It’s the easiest to use and comes with 12 different shapes you can swap out. Just read the hundreds of positive reviews. It also makes a wonderful holiday gift! I always include it in my annual guide full of Holiday Gifts for Bakers.
How to Make Spritz Cookies
This is my favorite recipe for spritz cookies. I love it so much that I published it in my cookbook Sally’s Cookie Addiction. Here’s why this is my favorite:
- Uses very basic ingredients
- 1-bowl recipe: Like snowball cookies, another easy and classic Christmas cookie!
- No dough-chilling required
- Fun to decorate, with no separate icing recipe required: Use sprinkles, chocolate chips, melted chocolate; and try tinting some of the dough a color.
- Freezer-friendly: After thawing, they still taste fresh!
- Ship wonderfully: These cookies hold their shape during the journey! Learn more about how to ship cookies.
The dough comes together in 1 bowl, using a mixer. There is no baking powder or baking soda needed; these buttery spritz cookies are dense, not airy. They hardly spread, so you can fit a bunch onto your baking sheets. Since the cookies are small, you can use 1 batch of dough to make a variety of shapes with your cookie press. You can even tint some of the cookie dough red or green like you see in my pictures!
How Do I Use a Cookie Press?
Each press comes with a set of instructions and the OXO cookie press I recommend is super user-friendly. Select a plate, such as the snowflake shape, and place it in the bottom compartment. After your cookie dough is prepared, spoon it inside the tube. Attach the top of the cookie press to the tube. Hold the cookie press upright, with the bottom pressed against your baking sheet. Press the lever until it clicks and lift up the cookie press. The shaped cookie will be on your baking sheet! *If the cookie dough sticks to the cookie press, use your fingers or a knife to release it and place onto the cookie sheet.
- No Cookie Press? Instead, use a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch (13 mm) open star tip and use my butter cookies or chocolate butter cookies recipe, which is this cookie dough with a little milk to help make it pipe-able. 🙂
Can I admit I prefer making these over decorating sugar cookies with royal icing? Ha! Spritz cookies are much neater and faster to make, and are festive right out of the oven!
Print
My Favorite Spritz Cookies
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 84 bite-size cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These are my favorite spritz cookies! Using a cookie press, shape this easy cookie dough into intricate shapes and have fun decorating with sprinkles, chocolate, and chocolate chips. No cookie dough chilling required and they freeze and ship wonderfully.
Ingredients
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 2 and 1/3 cups (291g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- optional: gel food coloring, sprinkles, chocolate chips, and melted chocolate for decorating
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C).
- Line 2 or 3 large baking sheets with silicone baking mats, or use nonstick baking sheets with no liner. (Do not use parchment paper because the cookie dough, when pressed out of the cookie press, will not adhere to it.) While the oven is preheating, and if your refrigerator or freezer has room, it’s helpful to chill your lined baking sheets. It sounds odd, but dough coming out of the cookie press adheres much better to a cold surface.
- Make the dough: In a large bowl, using a handheld mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and granulated sugar together on medium-high speed until smooth, about 3 minutes. (Here’s a helpful tutorial if you need guidance on how to cream butter and sugar.) Add the egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract, and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl and beat again as needed to combine.
- On low speed, beat in the flour and salt. Turn up to high speed and beat until completely combined.
- Press the dough: Follow cookie press manufacturer’s directions to fit your cookie press with a decorative plate. Scrape some of the dough into your cookie press. Hold the cookie press perpendicular to the cold lined baking sheet and press out the cookies 2 inches (5 cm) apart. If desired, decorate the shaped cookie dough with sprinkles or press a chocolate chip into the center. Note: It’s helpful to lightly brush the shaped cookie dough with water before adding sprinkles—this helps them stick.
- If the cookie dough becomes too soft as you work, chill the shaped cookie dough in the refrigerator for 10 minutes before baking.
- Bake until very lightly browned on the edges, 7–9 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. If desired, drizzle with melted chocolate.
- Cookies stay fresh in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: You can chill the cookie dough in the refrigerator for up to 4 days before pressing the dough through the cookie press. You can also freeze the cookie dough for up to 3 months; allow to thaw overnight in the refrigerator, then bring to room temperature before continuing with step 5. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months; thaw before serving.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | OXO Cookie Press | Cooling Rack | Gel Food Coloring (if desired for tinting the cookie dough) | Sprinkles (such as Red Sanding Sugar, Green Sanding Sugar, Sapphire Sanding Sugar, or Christmas Nonpareils)
- Almond Extract: Almond extract adds such a wonderful flavor and I don’t recommend skipping it. If desired, you can leave it out completely or add another 1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract in its place. You can also substitute with 3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract, lemon extract, or another flavor extract you enjoy. Adding 1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon is delicious too!
- Food Coloring: I tinted 1/4 of the cookie dough green with 1 very tiny drop of green food coloring. I recommend gel food coloring. Use sparingly; 2 drops is plenty for the entire batch.
- No Cookie Press? No problem! Instead, use a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch (13 mm) open star tip and use my butter cookies recipe, which is this cookie dough with a little milk to help make it pipe-able.
Reader Comments and Reviews
Hi Sally i love your recipe, i was wondering why you dont use baking soda or baking powder in this spritz cookies. I love your recipes i do them all the time. You are the best
Hi! Thank you so much for the kind words! Spritz cookies usually skip baking soda and baking powder because any leavening would cause them to puff and lose their clean, defined shape from the cookie press. Keeping the dough dense and buttery helps them bake up crisp, uniform, and beautifully detailed. I hope this helps!
The dough does not easily come out of the press
Thank you so much, Sally! I make 150 spritz cookies every year for our church bazaar and it has always been a frustrating experience – until this year. I have broken two presses in two years so I went out and bought the one you recommended and it worked perfectly! The dough was good, I chilled my cookie sheets in the freezer and on your recommendation I used my silicone mats. What a game changer! Previous recipes said to use the bare cookie sheets but so often the cookies wouldn’t stick or release properly. No problem at all with the new Oxo cookie press and my silicone mats. One comment – because my cookie sheets were cold, it took a bit longer to bake the cookies – 12 mins in my 325 convection oven.
It doesn’t say when you add the egg
Hi Rose! See the middle of step 3: Add the egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract, and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute.
how do you make the chocolate drizzle that goes over the spritz cookies? does it dry so cookies can be stored in layers in the freezer?
Hi Kathy, For the chocolate drizzle, we use a bar of pure chocolate melted down. (We prefer Bakers or Ghirardelli brands found in the baking aisle.) You just melt chocolate and you can simply use a spoon to drizzle the chocolate over the cookies or if you want to be more precise you can fill a piping bag (or even a ziplock bag with the corner cut off) with some melted chocolate. It will eventually set so that the cookies can be stored and stacked. Enjoy!
This is my go-to baking site and I have a question. While I’m pretty good baker, I suck with the press. Can these be rolled and cut? Thank you.
Hi Mary! Here’s our favorite roll out sugar cookies recipe.
How do I make them chocolate?
Hi Lynda, you can use our chocolate butter cookies recipe in a cookie press – see recipe Notes on that post for details. Happy baking!
A few years ago I printed this recipe and have been making these spritz cookies for my Christmas cookie tins. When I printed it the recipe said to use 2 and 1/4 cups of flour but now it says to use 2 and 1/3 cups flour. Why the change?
Hi Laura, we re-tested the recipe because some readers were commenting that they were having trouble with the cookies over-spreading and losing their shape. We found that a touch more flour helped prevent this from happening.
Hi Beth,
Thank you for your quick reply. Before last year I didn’t have any issues but last year I did notice that they weren’t keeping their shape at all during the bake and ended up as little blobs. Tasty but not cute. I’ve heard though that they are now putting more water in the butter and ingredients overall are different and so that is what is changing our results. I don’t know if that’s true but I will definitely try this updated recipe and see what happens!
Can I use this recipe as a ‘sandwich’ cookie and fill with a cream cheese or frosting filling?
Thank you
Delicious cookies. Can the recipe be doubled? I did and I measured the flour and had the same issue as a poster named Mark did. The dough needed more flour to be able to be handled. I am getting ready to make them again and wish to double it again they are so good!
Thank you.
Hi David, you should be able to double the recipe without issue, but if you find it’s getting too warm as you work (and therefore needing more flour), it may be better to make separate batches. We’re glad you enjoyed this recipe!
So tasty and so easy to make! Fun activity with kids
I can readily understand why these are your favorite, as they have now become mine! The dough is so easy to work with and mixes up in a jiffy. And that buttery goodness in each bite is a treat to the taste buds. Thank you for the recipe!
All of mine melted. I tried one batch on a silicon mat with gel food coloring, one on just a baking sheet with gel food coloring and one with no coloring on a baking sheet – all melted.
With 291g of flour the dough was very loose and sticky – couldn’t mold at all. After adding about 30g of flour it worked.
When I try spooning and leveling 2 1/3 cup flour I get about 320g which is in line with that.
I know all the sources seem to say 1 cup of flour spooned and leveled should be about 120g but I’m not experiencing that.
When I do your 2 1/3 cup volume the dough comes out right for me — it’s just much more than 290g.
I’m curious did you go by volume or weight when you wrote the recipe?
Struggling to get the right amount of flour in other recipes so any insight here would be appreciated!
Hi Mark, we always test with both. You can read more about measuring baking ingredients here – the weight measurements are always the most accurate!
These cookies are delicious! I used the OXO cookie press and rolled the dough into small logs in order to load the chamber. Made the chocolate version as well and loved it! I also experimented with some leftover dough and pressed it into a Madeline pan. Increased the bake time to 9 minutes and they were wonderful! Also got creative and combined the chocolate and vanilla doughs for marbeled Madeline cookies. Fun! Thanks, Sally, for another great recipe!
These turned out so good! We only had wheat flour and still so yummy!
I made these for the first time this past Christmas as I love to put together cookie boxes for my family and friends. These were so easy to make and they were a HUGE hit. I am now contractually obligated to make these every year. My fiance even said they tasted just like how his grandma makes them. Highest complement achieved. I followed the version of the recipe without the almond extract since I do have friends who are allergic to nuts.
I don’t know what went as I followed this recipe to the tee, but my cookies spread like crazy and all the definition of the shapes was gone! Taste was great but basically had little blobs… : (
How should I adjust the cocoa powder and flour to make chocolate spritz cookes?
Hi Dana, you can use our chocolate butter cookies recipe in a cookie press – see recipe Notes on that post for details.
I have forever struggled with getting a recipe that I was successful using my cookie press for. I have my mom’s vintage press that she used every christmas but I cannot replicate her dough to get the press to work. After many failed attempts and many recipes tried this is a WINNER!!!! I am so happy that I can make traditional cookie press cookies for my kids and future grandchildren. Thanks Sally! Your recipes never fail me
So happy to read this, Shannon!
Can I omit the almond extract? We’ve got an allergy in the house. Should I up the amount of vanilla?
Hi Steph, see the recipe note about almond extract: you can leave it out completely or add another 1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract in its place. You can also substitute with 3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract, lemon extract, or another flavor extract you enjoy. Adding 1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon is delicious too!
Success! Came out great and so easy, can you freeze them?
Hi Patty, yes! See the recipe Notes section for freezing instructions.
I love this recipe, it was PERFECT. My cookies came out perfect, flavor was light and tasty. It was a big hit at work! Will be making over and over
My granddaughter and I made the spritz cookies with a slight variation that my mother did…instead of unsalted butter we used salted butter and omitted the salt. We also made the recipe according to what is written here…we had my husband try from both and he really couldn’t tell the difference. These are a family tradition either way and for those that don’t buy salt due to diet…try using the normal table butter.
The dough had a really good flavor but the cookies were flat and melted. Did not hold their shape. Too much butter? Followed the recipe exactly. Chilled the pans. Chilled the dough. They spread everywhere. Not a fan. Usually you are a no miss. 3 stars for flavor.
We made two recipes of this dough and both were a mess, unfortunately. I have the OXO press and used a different recipe last year with easy success. This year we tried Sally’s recipe as I’ve used many of her recipes before! The cookies turned into little puddles in the oven. My teenager made the dough so I chalked it up to a mistake and we made a second batch. Same thing, although not quite as bad. What in the world? They were flat. We chilled the cookie sheets, used silicone, even chilled them on sheet before baking. We reduced time by one minute. Fail. Not trying a third time but wondering where we went wrong.
Hi Angie, We understand the frustration. If you decide to make the cookies again, try chilling the shaped cookies for even longer before they go into the oven. The colder the shaped dough, the less they will over-spread. Sorry for the trouble!
This recipe is amazing. In regards to Angie’s misfortune with the cookies spreading; it might be a result of the butter that was used. Some butter brands have a higher water content than fat. I find less pressing with Cabot and Land olakes brands. Just a thought. Happy baking. I hope she gives the recipe another try.
I agree 100% with you on type of butter used. Go with a name brand like Land O Lakes, Cabot, etc. It is worth it for taste, texture, and overall quality.. We used to buy store brand but stopped when we realized how much water or UNbuttery ingredients were in it. Live in and learn- ENJOY
Although I am a prolific baker of Xmas cookies, I have never made Spritz cookies. This year, my local Costco had the OXO cookie press with 18 discs for $15 so I bought one. I go to Sally’s for almost all of cookie recipes, and I’m so glad I did this one. The dough was really easy to work with, and it was delicious! Thank you for another great recipe!
I like that the cookies are not too sweet and butter taste is there. But I have a problem with the cookies inner taste. I feel that the inner cookies is soft despite following the oven setting at 177 degrees Celsius and 9 mins of baking. How to make the inner cookies taste crunchy or crispy?
Hi Pei, these cookies are on the softer side. Definitely more of a tender bite than crispy.
Can we make these with piping bags instead of a cookie press?
Yes, they should work with a piping bag and a star tip!