Happy Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the first official day of winter! With four days until Christmas, I’ve been baking a lot of cookies, including these berry spritz cookies.
Spritz cookies are a holiday classic. They are buttery, delicious and fun to make. The simple butter cookie dough is pushed through a cookie press directly onto a baking sheet to create the distinct shapes and designs.
Here, I replace traditional food coloring with freeze-dried berries, which are ground to a powder to add color and slight flavor! For these berry spritz cookies, I used strawberries and blueberries, but feel free to try other fun flavors like cranberry, pomegranate, or orange which create vivid, natural colors without added dye. Berry spritz cookies will add a touch of pastel to your holiday baking repertoire !
ingredients
for the cookie dough
- 1 cup butter, softened
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons of ground freeze-dried sliced strawberries (about ½ cup unground)
- 2 tablespoons of ground freeze-dried blueberries (about ¼ cup unground)
for the topping
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon water
- Turbinado sugar
steps
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the flour and salt.
Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, almond extract, and vanilla extract. Slowly add in the dry ingredients. Beat until the dough forms.
Divide the dough in half and place one half in a separate bowl and the other half in the mixer bowl. Add the strawberry powder to mixer bowl and beat on medium speed until thoroughly combined and dough has turned pink.
Remove the strawberry dough from the mixer bowl and beat the remaining dough with the blueberry powder.
Whisk the remaining egg with 1 tablespoon of water.
Using a cookie press, press cookies directly onto a greased, unlined baking sheet. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
Bake for 6-7 minutes, rotating the pan once.
