it is time to keep the tradition going with spritz cookies that wreath is truly a bouquet of color look at all the choices there and it's a tradition for you right your family absolutely we used to make them every christmas but you know you don't have to make them just at christmas time you have a lot of designs for other holidays and just a basic flower it depends on what type of cookie press that you have but each of the cookie presses will have different types of designs but let me show you how to load just a basic cookie press you want to pull if it has teeth you want to pull it away from your handle so that you can actually pull it up i like to roll my dough in a sausage and stick it in now i just have a little bit of dough here i would actually put more in here if i were going to really press out of this one is this just sugar cookie dough is that what that is it's spritz cookie dough it is it has a special oh i didn't know that okay and then when you put your disc in this particular model says this side out so you want to make sure you put your disc in and you seat it so it's down in there and it's firm and then you just screw on your base then you need to turn your teeth around so they'll engage so you begin to get it to move it into place okay okay now i have some pre-loaded here and when you're getting ready to press them out okay turn my teeth there you just press and you're actually bringing it down so that it engages and it's pressing your dough now most of the time your first cookie isn't your most perfect cookie because you know you're kind of getting into a rhythm so one little pump in it one pump right down as you can see my first two aren't perfect but you know what they're still very good and very tasty and these freeze really well also right so you can make them ahead of time and pull them out and what flavors do you recommend well that's good almond butter works real well now this actually is this pumpkin this is a pumpkin okay and you just press down there you go and you could actually flavor it with some cinnamon and sugar and if one doesn't work you know we're not going to throw this dough away we're actually going to use it again because we can reload it in the uh container you know well you can't eat it um so so we do have lots of flavors to choose from a lot of varieties there's coconut there's pineapple there's lemon there's orange and as you can see just about every time don't be disappointed if your first cookie isn't exactly the way you want it lots of colors lots of flavors a big variety and then all the different shapes that you have to choose from mm-hmm and you know what i could see this for a gift exchange if you go to a cookie party and exchange recipes with someone else for for these girls here's the ribbon one you just turn it sideways and you just actually pump it out like that right and then you can have a spatula or a knife and you do it like that and they bake up and you can even put jelly on them or something and make it easier i would use the spritz recipe that we have on the website because if you don't and you buy the refrigerated dough some of the refrigerated doughs have too much leavening in there and you can see we have some designs here and they will actually bake out with the leavening so i i prefer not to use the refrigerated dough at all and how would you decorate these well there's so many different ways that you can decorate these if it's springtime you could stick a little chocolate chip in there and make a black-eyed susan you could actually stick some nuts in there i've got pecans and almonds now you've got some colored sugars too okay all of these are okay to decorate before you even the colored sugar oh absolutely what happens to colored sugar whether you put it on beforehand or after if you put it on beforehand it just bakes into the cookie you still get the definition with it but if you put it on after you're going to have to add some icing because it's not going to stick and nuts it's okay to put the nuts i absolutely bake well i like toasted nuts actually when you bake nuts you get a flavor enhancement and how long would you bake these probably about eight to ten minutes and the other thing is is make sure you have the common shapes on your baking sheet when you put it in the oven so that way they do bake um will they grow a little bit or do they hold them a little bit but they don't have a whole lot of leavening in them okay and that's why they'll be able to retain their shape let's see would you like i can do those no i can do it okay i'm an adept kitchen person when you bring them out i would put them directly on a cooling grid and then i would go ahead and take them off and put them on a cooling grid and get them off the uh so the cookie sheets so the edges don't extra brown and these freeze really well so you could make a whole bunch up at one time so they have a little butter in them and those would be great to put them on a plate tie them up with a bow maybe a bag of tea or a sugar stick for a teacher's gift or a welcome to the neighborhood we have some other options over here i can smell the cheese if you're not into sugar look at all of these now i smell pumpkins somewhere i don't know if this is the pumpkin there's smells you can make savory crackers with them and they're so yummy we've got pumpkin there we've got barbecue and then we've got two different flavors of cheese and then the ribbon uh candy the ribbon cookies next to it have been pressed out but then you've got the sprinkled powdered sugar on the top and that's a very nice presentation and that's like i did that last cookie that i put on the tray and you just put them together with a little bit of preserves in between it makes a very elegant presentation so there's a lot of uses for the spritz cookies and you know what if they're not a family tradition yet you should make them one you know at our house we do the church windows the stained glass church windows with the chocolate and the oh what marshmallows that they do and it is something nice that we do together as a family every year um when you are planning for this uh you need to get this out and let it set up ahead of time that the cookie dough or do you just take it right out of the refrigerator uh usually just make it and just start pressing right then oh great you could refrigerate it but you'd want to bring it back to room temperature if you made it ahead and then we're going to press them out because if it's too cold it's more difficult to press them out so they're