Prep Time : 30 Minutes | Cook Time : 15 Minutes | Total Time : 2 hours | Difficulty : Moderate
Taking the classic red velvet flavours of vanilla, chocolate and cream cheese icing and turning them into a buttery sandwich cookie turned out to be an excellent idea. Apart from being visually striking and delicious these cookies also give me an excuse to use my greatest op-shop purchase ever – a $2 cookie press from the 80s!
If you don’t have a cookie press you can also pipe the cookies using a pastry bag and large star tip. Preheat the oven and line cookie sheets with baking paper.
Mix the egg yolk, vanilla, cream and food colouring together and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar until very pale and fluffy.
Add the egg yolk mixture and beat in well. Add the sifted flour and cocoa and mix until combined.
Fill and use your cookie press according to its instructions or fill a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip about 2/3 full and pipe cookies onto the prepared sheets about 1 inch apart. It will take a little practice and you can scrape up failed cookies and re-pipe them – just take care not to warm the dough too much with a lot of handling. I couldn’t help using the heart disc for these ones!
Bake the cookies at 180C (350F) for 12 minutes rotating the trays halfway through. My cookies are about 2 inches across so if yours are smaller you will need to adjust the cooking time – your nose will tell you when they are done.
Cool the cookies completely on a wire rack. While they are cooling make the icing. Beat all the icing ingredients together with a hand-held electric beater or stand mixer until soft and fluffy. This will take a few minutes so be patient, the fluffier it is the easier it will be to use. When they are cold, match them up into pairs and spread or pipe cream cheese icing onto one half of each pair. Sandwich them together and you’re ready to go.
The best thing is these cookies taste amazing whether you eat them by yourself or share them with another!
Red Velvet Spritz Cookies
Prep Time : 30 mins | Cook Time : 15 mins | Total Time : 2 hours | Difficulty : Moderate | Makes : 40 sandwich cookies
Classic red velvet flavours in delicate bite sized cookies.
Ingredients:
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp cream or full fat milk
- 2 tsp red gel food colouring
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 225 gm | 8 oz | 16 tbsp butter
- 130 gm | 4.7 oz | 1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar
- 280 gm | 10 oz | 1 3/4 cups flour – measure this then remove 1 tbsp
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 150 gm | 5.4 oz | 1 cup loosely packed icing sugar
- 25 gm | 1 oz | 2 tbsp butter
- 65 gm | 2.3 oz cream cheese
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Line cookie sheets with baking paper and set aside. Mix the egg yolk, vanilla, cream and food colouring together and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar until very pale and fluffy. Add the egg yolk mixture and beat in well. Add the sifted flour and cocoa and mix until combined.
Fill and use your cookie press according to its instructions or fill a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip about 2/3 full and pipe cookies onto the prepared sheets about 1 inch apart. It will take a little practice and you can scrape up failed cookies and re-pipe them – just take care not to warm the dough too much with a lot of handling.
Bake the cookies for 12 minutes rotating the trays halfway through. My cookies are about 2 inches across so if yours are smaller you will need to adjust the cooking time – your nose will tell you when they are done.
Cool the cookies completely on a wire rack. While they are cooling make the icing. Beat all the icing ingredients together with a hand-held electric beater or stand mixer until soft and fluffy. This will take a few minutes so be patient, the fluffier it is the easier it will be to use. When they are cold match them up into pairs and spread or pipe cream cheese icing onto one half of each pair and sandwich together.
Adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.
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These look excellent. But suspiciously like biscuits, rather than cookies. Do you have a view on the distinction?
well before americanisation of popular culture language – everything that was sweet was a biscuit, and while in NZ the switch started with the softer chewy heartier type, I think these days the words are pretty much interchangeable. Of course if you ask an american a biscuit is they will show you a scone…
Baked these today and they are delicious. The only think I did different was to add some salt to the cookie dough… about 1/2 teaspoon
Hi Lisa – glad you liked them! I have a question – are you using unsalted butter? For a long time I was baking with salted butter (it was much easier to get in NZ and unsalted was very expensive) and didn’t make adjustments for that! I have since switched – I need to go back and adjust the older recipes!