Nobody's Perfect, Me Included - But My Butter Spritz Cookies Are

Butter Spritz Cookies!

Two weeks ago I made a beautiful batch of Butter Spritz Cookies.  Topping each 'star' dollop of dough with a tiny pastel mint.  They were adorable little bites of yummie-ness.  The whole batch came out perfect.  My timing was impeccable with regards to the oven and I was one proud baker-lady.  One batch yielded me about 72 cookies.  The problem with having cute little bites of yumminess in a cookie,  they just don't last long.  After packaging some of them for friends, I munched down one too many.  But such is life.  They WERE good.  So today I decided to make another batch.  Maybe sending some out to my Mom and my Dad for Easter.

So here comes the not so perfect part.  Just when I think I have it down.  Just when I think my confidence is strong.  I then let my guard down just a bit and 'brown' a batch of cookies.  Not the whole batch, but it might as well have been.  The first tray, 24 beautiful looking Butter Spritz cookies came out perfect!  The second tray, again, 24 dainty little bites, in the oven and I forget to set the timer.  Guessing that 2 of the first 5 minutes went by, I sent the timer for 3 minutes.  After the 3 minutes I rotated the pan and set the timer for the remaining 4 minutes.  Well, nope, this wasn't a good strategy.  My gut told me to cut it by one minute, just in case.  But I didn't listen to my gut and of course over baked this tray by at least 2 minutes easy.  Mind you they don't taste 'bad', but they don't taste 'great' either, and to me that matters a lot.  Such is life I guess, lesson learned and life goes on.

These little Butter Spritz cookies are just adorable and scrumptious all in one bite!  Although, I did have one challenge.  The dough was quite stiff and I have to pipe these cookies through a piping bag with an open star tip.  As I filled my pastry bag and had my sheet trays ready and waiting, I realized that it was going to take all my might to push the dough through the piping bag.  This was actually quite excruciating and almost painful.  Frustrating to say the least.  So I decided to put my pastry bag full of cookie dough in the microwave to soften up the dough a bit.  It worked fine, although I'm not proud that I had to do this, but it did the trick and softened up the dough just enough to allow me to pipe my starlets with much more ease.

Since I basically lost 24 cookies from my batch today, I foresee another batch in the works for tomorrow.  Never give up is my motto!  And I never will.  Happy Baking!