For all of you who haven’t finished your holiday baking, I have an incredible recipe for you.  It’s from my Uncle Daniel, and it’s really the best.  Spritz cookies…beautiful spritz cookies.

And I even have a couple of pictures of Em making them from back in the day:

Now these cookies are a little more labor intensive than I prefer, but they are totally worth it.

The ingredients:

I tripled the batch so I needed a lot of butter.

And because I didn’t buy almond meal, I ground up slivered almonds:

I used a coffee grinder (that I’ve never actually used for coffee) and it worked perfectly.  And then I sifted the ground almonds:

After that, I sifted the flour, baking soda and salt together:

Then I moved onto the wet ingredients.  I creamed the butter, superfine sugar, eggs and almond extract together:

And added the flour mixture and ground almonds.  Once that was combined I was ready to pipe.

I used the ribbon disc and piped long cookies.  After baking, I trimed off the ends and cut them into 3-inch long cookies.

They are thin, light and beautiful.   And it worked wonderfully…UNTIL MY F*CKING COOKIE PRESS BROKE.

And that’s when all the joy left my holiday baking.  After messing with my cookie gun for about an hour, I gave up.  And then I texted my friend, Keri.  You know, the one who gave me that beautiful box of treats?  Well she had a cookie press!  And it was brand new.  The bad news?  There was no ribbon disc.  So I made these:

Not too bad…just a little more dense than the ribbon ones.

You should really make these!!  Here’s the recipe!

• 3 T. ground almonds, sifted or almond meal
• 2 C. +2 T. flour
• 1/4 t. salt
• 1/4 t. baking soda
• 1 C. butter
• 3/4 superfine sugar
• 1 t. almond extract
• 1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift flour, baking soda and salt to combine thoroughly, set aside.  Cream butter and sugar.  Add almond extract and egg, beat thoroughly.  Add almond and dry ingredients.  Mix everything until smoothly combined.

Pipe ribbons or dough or other shapes onto parchment lined cookie sheet.  Bake 5-6 minutes.  Turn pans top to bottom, front to back.  Bake for an additional 5-6 minutes until the edges start to golden.  Remove from oven and cut immediately into 3-inch lengths while still how using a sharp knife or pizza cutter.  Let cool (or not) and shove them in your face!