Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Und jetzt..etwas Süsses, gell? (Sprits cookies)

I promised you a recipe from my new "cookie bookie". Well this is it! The amount of dough is enough for an almost American (read: un Dutch) mountain of cookies. The name of these very Dutch cookies is: "sprits" and I took some with me together with some other goodies to present to Angelika, the Flying Apple. She opted to be my hostess and showed me her city in two lovely days!

I said very Dutch cookie but it appears that the name is a derivation of the German word Spritzkuchen, as the dough is "spritzed" on the bakingsheet. As you can see it all comes together, these cookies deserved to be taken abroad, not to Germany but in this case to Austria. They were very good, behaved well during flight and were equally tasty even two days after baking.

Recipe:
1 egg, beaten
380 gr soft butter
200 gr white muscovado sugar
1/2 ts salt
15 gr vanilla sugar (2 packages)
250 gr all purpose flour (patent bloem)
250 gr flour again all purpose or zeeuwse bloem which has less gluten!*

Cream egg and butter till fluffy, add sugars and salt and knead the sifted flours in. On a lightly floured surface, rub/knead the dough with both hands carefully untill you have a very pliable soft supple mass.
Transfer the dough to a piping bag fitted with a star tip (no. 12) and proceed to pipe on a baking sheet. You can opt for a lot of different shapes, as you can see in the Wikipedia information. I piped stripes for easier transporting purposes.
Bake for 15 minutes in a pre-heated oven 175C. If you use the long piped swirl, cut into desired size right after baking. (For beautiful sprits pictures, look here)


* for my Dutch readers: info on varieties of (dutch) flourtypes or here!. Due to its lower gluten and less proteine the "zeeuwse bloem" is especially suitable for baking cookies (not for baking bread!).

More about my visit to Vienna in the next post. Angelika sent me photo's showing our welcome to Naschmarkt by a very friendly stall-owner...
In the meantime let me say thank you to Angelika for entertaining us during these days in Vienna. You're a jewel!

Photo taken in Natur Historisches Museum, Vienna

3 comments:

  1. Dear Karen, thank you so much for this lovely post - for the recipe I have been looking forward so much. And, above all, for your kind words !

    I can testify that these cookies are simply to die for - one of the best I have ever heard, and that really means something for an Austrian girl. I will reproduce them as soon as possible !

    It has been such a pleasure to have you here. Here's to many "come back-s" !

    Much love and hugs, angelika

    who is really looking forward to your fun post about Naschmarkt and that "charmante" guy !

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  2. I love spritsen! I have the book too, but it's wrapped up and I can only have it on Christmas Day. Waah.

    I bought another book today though to make up for it - The Dutchman's Kitchen - lovely book! Sounds like you had a wonderful time in Vienna, looking forward to hearing more. :)

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  3. Karen,

    It sounds like you had a wonderful time! The cookies look lovely!

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