The Great Pumpkin Spritz Cookies
Add these pumpkin spice flavored cute little cookies to your Halloween treat bags for friends or coworkers, or brighten up your Thanksgiving desert table with a sweet little nibble that isn't pie. They look like you spent all day, but you can whip these up in an hour or so (and no messy icing or rolling and cutting and flour everywhere like most festive cookies).
Equipment
- sturdy pastry bag
Ingredients
- 8 oz butter (2 sticks/16 tbsp)
- ¾ cup white sugar
- 1 large whole egg
- 1 egg yolk
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp pumpkin spice extract (substitute cinnamon, rum, almond, or butter flavoring, or more vanilla)
- 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
- 1-3 tbsp milk or cream
Instructions
mix spritz dough:
- Cream softened butter either by hand or with the paddle attachment of a mixer until smooth, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add sugar.
- Continue creaming the butter and sugar together, stopping a few times to scrape the sides and horn of the bowl (if applicable), until the mixture is light and fluffy.
- Add the salt, the egg, and the egg yolks, one at a time, and the vanilla and pumpkin spice extract. Scrape the sides of the bowl and mix again until the mixture is well-emulsified.
- Add the flour, one cup at a time, mixing only a few seconds between each addition, stopping to scrape the sides and paddle of the mixer. If mixing by hand, fold the flour gently in to the wet ingredients. Mix until well combined.
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ (180℃ or gas mark 4).
divide & tint dough:
- Divide dough into two bowls- remove about ¼ of the dough to dye green for the stems, leaves, and vines, and add orange coloring to the rest (or a mix of red and yellow coloring until the desired shade is reached).
- Mix just enough to incorporate the dye. Too much mixing will make tough cookies.
pipe spritz pumpkins & vines:
- Add a spoonful of dough to your piping bag fitted with a large star tip (½" diameter open star tip is a good one to start with) and check the consistency.
- If the dough is too stiff to pipe easily, you can add up to a few tablespoons of milk to thin the dough slightly. When the consistency is right, fill your piping bag(s) no more than two-thirds full and pipe your cookies.
- Get your cookie sheets ready and line them with nonstick silicone baking liners or parchment paper so the cookies don't stick to the sheets and break.
- If you have multiple bags and tips you can fill both, or do one color at a time and wash the bag between batches.
- Pipe the orange dough first, holding the piping bag perpendicular to the cookie sheet to form pumpkin shapes, then top them with smaller dabs of green dough to make stems.
- Use up any leftover green dough after adding stems to your "pumpkins" by piping flat leaves and squiggly vines to make stem shapes.
- If you are using decorative sugar or oven-safe sprinkles, use these before baking so they'll stick to the dough. You can also leave the cookies plain, or decorate them with royal icing after they have baked and cooled.
bake piped spritz pumpkins:
- Bake for 9-12 minutes, or until the cookies are just set to the touch but not browning.
- Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes, then use a thin metal spatula to transfer to wire racks to cool.
- If you are doing a big batch and need to reuse cookie sheets, make sure the sheets cool between batches before piping more cookies. If you pipe the dough on hot cookie sheets, they will spread too much.
Notes
Nutritional information provided is an estimate, and calculated for a batch of 24 cookies. Piping larger or smaller cookies will change the values.
Nutrition
Calories: 141kcalCarbohydrates: 15gProtein: 2gFat: 8gSaturated Fat: 5gPolyunsaturated Fat: 0.4gMonounsaturated Fat: 2gTrans Fat: 0.3gCholesterol: 36mgSodium: 113mgPotassium: 20mgFiber: 0.3gSugar: 6gVitamin A: 259IUCalcium: 7mgIron: 1mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
