To start the story, let me say how famous my grandma’s spritz cookies are in/around my family. She would make them by the ton when we were kids - some for her friends, neighbors and for family events. Little brown camels and frosted trees and poinsettias with green and red sprinkles on them. They are a delicious butter cookie that you can eat in two bites. My grandma also made the best sugar cookies ever, so thin and crisp and dusted with sugar - my favorite cookie of all time, Grandma’s sugar cookies. And ask anyone who knows me how much I can’t stand peanut butter; the taste, the texture, the smell, ugh - but my grandma made the best peanut butter cookies and I loved them. She had a talent.


Anyways, when my grandma’s hands got too arthritic to use the cookie press any longer, my mom took over the spritz cookie making. My mom also makes a good Christmas sugar cookie, with a little frosting for décor. A few years ago my mom’s hands got too bad for her to make the spritz, so one year we went without. There was an uproar from the family when there weren’t any spritz at our gathering and no tins for us to hand out to friends. After that, my sister took over the whole ordeal. She bakes, I decorate. We get a few inquiries ever year about whether or not we are still going to make the spritz cookies again. I guess we’ll have to pass the recipe and press along to The Nephew or Niece when the day comes that my sister can’t do it any longer.

I remember last year I was at therapy and one of the girls asked what I was doing when I got home and I told her I had to decorate all the spritz cookies. Then she freaked out because it seems she loves spritz and hadn’t had them in years. None of the other girls knew what spritz were, so I brought in a tin for them. I swear, the whole tin was empty almost by the time my appointment was over an hour later. Actually this year - my sister’s first Christmas at the new job - and she brought in a tin and one of her coworkers came up to her and asked, “Are these made from crack?”

This year we made a ton to take up to my Dad in the rehab ward, enough that he could share them with the other veterans and nurses and whatnot. So many, in fact, that the lid wouldn’t quite go securely down on the tin. We decorated the cookies and while I was not looking, Kirk came over and stole one of the camels and then took it to a corner where he ‘killed’ it and ate it. Little trouble-maker, James T. Kirk! Later that night, Dad’s tin of cookies was sitting on the counter and I came out to see Kirk had knocked the lid off and was stealing a cookie right off the top and running away with the damn thing.

My grandma’s spritz cookies - back by popular demand from family, friends, neighbors and kitties alike!

Also, it seems since I ventured to ask my mom if she was going to make her awesome Christmas sugar cookies this year, that I have somehow gotten roped into going over to her house this weekend to help decorate them. I think she forgets how extravagant I get with my decorating. My Christmas trees always look like those hideous ones from a Charlie Brown’s Christmas. Oh well, she’ll get what she pays for!