Green Cookies

In preparation for a day filled with everything green, I spent yesterday evening making green cookies! I dug out my mom's recipe for chocolate chip cookies (the best and only recipe I will use) and decided to try a new recipe I found for spritz cookies.

Since I'm not really a huge fan of chocolate (other than dark) I always leave the chocolate chips out of my chocolate chip cookies, I think it makes them too sweet and I prefer to focus on the sweet brown sugar and vanilla flavor of the dough. When I cream the sugars and butter I added a healthy amount of green food coloring to make them festive. When time to bake came I used my new Small Scoop, that holds about 1 T, to make perfectly even and adorable little dough balls that baked into wonderfully round and evenly sized chocolate chip cookies sans chips. They are amazing, and very pleasing to the perfectionist in me.

For my spritz cookies I had to beat them a little extra since my butter wasn't quite softened enough, which turned out to be a good thing as it made the dough nice and fluffy/creamy. I deviated from the recipe just a bit by adding 1/4 tsp of almond extract and 1/2 T of orange zest. I used my cookie press, which I've only used once before with not the best results. It turns out that the first time I used it my dough was too soft, which is why all my cookies were only vaguely pumpkin shaped (although definitely pumpkin flavored!). I used the dragonfly/butterfly plate (not 100% which one it's supposed to be) and since these cookies are green they sort of ended up looking like clovers, which is cool because I made them for St. Patrick's Day.

At the end of my baking adventure I now know I have 2 tools I would never want to be without again (at least when it comes to cookies)! Next time, I'm going to try baking cookies on stoneware, and I'll be sure to share.