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Based on my grandmother’s recipe, these tender, buttery spritz cookies are flavored with vanilla and almond extracts for a classic holiday cookie you’re sure to love. Using egg yolks rather than a whole egg makes for a truly melt-in-your-mouth texture.

This small-batch recipe is scaled to use a single egg yolk and one stick of butter, and will give you 50-60 small spritz cookies, perfect for a smaller gathering (but you can certainly double or even triple it when a larger batch is needed!)

One of my earliest memories is making spritz cookies with my grandmother for Christmas, the palm trees glittering with lights and the warm breeze a welcome change from the Colorado snow (white Christmases are overrated, in my opinion: the only white I want to see at Christmastime is sugar.)

Growing up, we usually spent Christmas on the opposite coast in Florida with my mom’s side of the family, but that one year in Los Angeles, with Bettie and the rest of the Landis clan, stands out in my mind, if only for the dozens and dozens of Christmas cookies we made together, including cut out sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies, but always (always!) spritz cookies.

I recently asked my aunts if they had Bettie’s recipe for spritz cookies, and sure enough, they did. In true Bettie fashion the ingredients were written on an index card, two different recipe variations labeled simply Spritz #1 and Spritz #2, but nothing else: no oven temperature or cook time or instructions whatsoever. Actually, if we’re being honest here, the fact the recipes actually had amounts was astonishing!

I tested both recipes, deciding that Spritz #1 was our favorite, although we preferred granulated sugar instead of powdered sugar, and made a few other modern changes like adding a pinch of salt as well as a touch of cornstarch to mimic the tenderness of cake flour.

If you want a cookie with more shape definition, you can increase the flour by a tablespoon or two. But as written the cookies are tender and buttery and practically melt in your mouth.

One thing I remember most about making spritz cookies with Bettie is the old-fashioned cookie press she had, and just how much pain it inflicted on your poor wrists and hands, no doubt leaving you with aching wrists and sore arms the day after using it.

Luckily, times have changed, and modern cookie presses are worlds away from that old metal press, with an ergonomic lever that pumps out a perfectly shaped cookie with barely any pressure. This OXO cookie press is my personal favorite (I particularly love the snowflake shape for a more universal holiday cookie).

The trick to getting spritz cookies to stick to the cookie sheets? Easy: simply freeze your cookie sheets first. A good 10 to 15 minutes in the freezer and your cookies will stick to the cookie sheet, like magic. Don’t try to go too fast, press down the handle, pause for a second to let the dough flash-chill, then gently lift up and your cookie should remain perfectly positioned on the cookie sheet. It may take a few tries to get it to work, but trust me, it does.

For this recipe I recommend using a light colored, heavy duty cookie sheet. Light colored is important otherwise your cookie bottoms will get too brown. Some recipes will tell you to use a non-nonstick aluminum cookie sheet, but I had issues with the baked cookies sticking to this kind. I personally have the best luck using a light colored non-stick cookie sheet, like this OXO cookie sheet or these King Arthur half sheet pans.

If your cookie sheets are on the thin side, it may be helpful to stack two cookie sheets together and bake the cookies like that. The double layer provides extra insulation and will keep the bottoms from browning too quickly.

If you are baking multiple sheets of cookies, you want to wipe down the cookie sheet and refreeze it between each batch. If you have multiple cookie sheets this process will be quicker, otherwise let the cookies cool for 5-10 minutes, transfer them to a wire cooling rack, then once the cookie sheet is cool to the touch, wipe off the residual grease and sanding sugar that may be stuck to it, and pop it back in the freezer for 10 minutes.

With a sprinkle of opal sanding sugar and a pinch of iridescent edible glitter, these snowflake spritz cookies sparkle like freshly fallen snow.

I used the snowflake disk from the Christmas Cookie Press Disk set, which is more detailed than the standard snowflake disk that comes with the press.

Remember, if you want to make multiple shapes, limit yourself to one shape per cookie sheet, since the different shapes will bake at different rates.

For a multi-colored effect, color one half of your dough with 1-2 drops of sky blue Americolor gel food coloring – the blue mixes with the natural yellow of the dough to form a lovely turquoise blue. Press one sheet of blue cookies (slightly less than a full tube’s worth, ~20 cookies) and one of white, which should leave you with a small ball of each color leftover. Roll into logs and twist the two colors together, then load into the cookie press for a pretty swirled effect.

You could also go classic, with red and green sanding sugar, like grandma Bettie used to do. Classic or not, I think she’d be pleased with these… although, as my aunt noted in the comments, Bettie usually made huge batches of these for the holidays, so my ‘small batch’ version might have her aghast. Luckily the conversion is pretty easy if you do want to make a bigger batch… just saying!

Note: This recipe has been updated as of 12/17/24. The original recipe called for 2 egg yolks and slightly more flour, but some folks had issues with the dough being too crumbly. After re-testing the recipe multiple times, I’ve returned to my grandma’s original proportions, with just 1 egg yolk and less flour, which makes for a soft dough that’s easy to press. If you want a little bit more definition in your cookie shapes (like the detailed snowflakes pictured), you can increase the flour by 2-4 tablespoons as needed.