Botersprits

The first time you eat a botersprits, you wonder where this cookie has been all your life. The soft crumb, the sweet taste, the undeniable flavor of quality butter, sweet sugar, and freshly zested lemon peel or vanilla make for an amazing combination. Sometimes spritsen come with an edge of dark chocolate, sometimes they present themselves in all their simple glory. But they're hard to forget.

Good spritsen, that is, are hard to forget. Unfortunately bad ones are too. They continue to linger on the brain as well as on your taste buds. Those are the ones made with margarine, or sweeteners, or cheap chocolate. These imitators leave an odd taste in the mouth, a funky layer on your teeth, and don't do the sprits any justice. Oddly enough, these sprits simulators are mostly baked commercially and are sold in large amounts from supermarkets, grocery stores and *gasp* even professional bakeries! 

That's why it's so surprising that so few people bake their own sprits (originally a German cookie that is piped or pressed, gespritzt) at home. The ingredients are few, but should be of top quality. The dough is easily put together and the cookies bake in less than twenty minutes. Enough time to brew a fresh batch of coffee or boil water for tea, take the mugs out of the cupboard and invite the neighbor lady over. In the old days, you could just knock on the wall and she'd know the coffee is ready, but with all these modern insulation techniques that is a thing of the past. 

For Utrechtse sprits, you pipe the dough moving left to right on parchment paper, and cut after they're baked as in the photo. For regular sprits, you can pipe individual cookies, either ovals or round shaped. Just make sure they're approximately the same height and volume, so they can bake at the same time.  It's easiest to pipe the cookie dough through a star-shaped tip, but ultimately, it doesn't matter much what shape or size you give it. 

Utrechtse Sprits
2 sticks quality butter (225 grams), room temperature
3/4 cup (150 grams) sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose or cake flour
2 teaspoons lemon zest (optional)

Cream the butter and the sugar into a pale, fluffy mass. Add the salt, stir once or twice, then add the whole egg and stir it with the paddle or by hand until the egg has been fully incorporated. Now mix in the vanilla extract. Sift the flour and divide it in two halves: add one half at a time to the butter and stir until it's absorbed. At this point you can stir in the lemon zest if you'd like. 

Transfer the soft dough to a piping bag outfitted with a large star tip. 

Heat the oven to 350F. Place the parchment paper on a baking sheet and place it in the hot oven. They should turn color in about fifteen minutes, and are ready as soon as the edges start to color golden. If you baked long strips, you can cut these in individual portions (approx 3 or 4 inches) immediately when the cookies come out of the oven. Let them cool while you brew some fresh coffee or tea, and look forward to enjoying the fruits of your labor!


Tip 1: To pipe them in long strips, draw two pencil lines on parchment paper, parallel to each other with a distance of 2 1/2 (6 cm) apart. Pipe the cookie dough in between these two lines, as seen in the picture. It will help to maintain similar size. 

Tip 2: bake one cookie first to check the spread - it should barely spread out and not lose its definitions. If it does, fold in one or two heaping tablespoons of flour.



11 comments:

  1. Hey, I tried to bake these cookies but my came out flat. Despite the piping, the ridges smoothed out and I was left with a tray of tasty but unattractive cookies. Any thoughts as to what I did wrong?

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    1. Kapin21, there could be several reasons why they flattened: it could be that there was too much air in the dough, or not enough flour, the butter may have been too soft, the kitchen might have been too hot.....there is a whole array of reasons why sometimes cookies work out fine and why that same recipe can spread the next time you bake it. I tend to bake a tester to see how the dough holds up before I pipe the whole dough, just pipe or scoop one portion and bake it. If it flattens out too much I add a tablespoon of flour and chill the dough after piping it, for a good 30 minutes. Let the baking sheet cool off if you are doing multiple batches, don't grease the parchment paper if it doesn't call for it, but most of all, don't give up! Just by trying it, you are already way ahead of others that wish they had! The cookies may not have looked good but I bet they tasted great.

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    2. Hi Nicole,

      Mine flattened two. I've made two batches now because I over beat the butter on the first batch but the same thing happened on the second. I even chilled the batches for 30 minutes, sometimes more. Is there some special way you pipe the dough? I feel like getting the dough soft enough to pipe is not helping the consistency.

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    3. I also weigh my ingredients so I'm pretty sure it's not a flour issue.

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  2. What is the measure of butter 2 sticks = how many grams

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  3. Please what is the measure of butter?

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    Replies
    1. 226.8 gram or 1 cup of butter is 2 sticks of butter

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  4. Hello! One stick of butter is 15 grams. The page on top called "What's in a cup?" has additional weights and measurements. Hope this helps!

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    Replies
    1. Hello Nicole....love your website and recipes!!! One stick of butter in the US is 1/2 cup, which is 113 grams. You are using weight not volume measurements, right?

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  5. Hi, i live in Indonesia and we got a whole variety of Dutch influenced baked goods. I’m not sure if the spelling is correct but can you share the recipe for saucijbrood?
    Thanks
    Ima

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    Replies
    1. Ima, you can find the recipe for saucijzenbroodjes in the column on the right hand side, or on this link: http://www.thedutchtable.com/2010/02/saucijzenbroodjes-dutch-sausage-rolls.html. Enjoy!

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