Vegetable shortening ... yuck!

I've been busy around here baking for Christmas. I know it seems a bit early, but I've been getting Jesse's Christmas box ready for mailing tomorrow. I remembered that I had one of those nifty cookie presses sitting in my cupboard (battery powered nonetheless) that hadn't been used for quite awhile. I also remembered that Jesse liked this kind of cookie when he was younger, and he liked helping me with the cookie press too. My grandma Mary made the very best butter spritz cookies for our entire family each Christmas. She would start in August and honestly bake 100 dozen or more of these cookies. When she made them, they were not only delicious, but they were a work of art. I used to just love to see a whole platter full of them on her dining room table at Christmastime.

So PLAN A was that I was going to make four separate batches of these spritz cookies and put them in four pretty tins to put in Jesse's box. Saturday afternoon I began my baking in earnest. I got everything out, decided which four designs I was going to use, exactly how I was going to color them, which flavor extracts I was going to use, etc. The recipe enclosed in the box my cookie press came in was pretty straight-forward, and there were scribbles in my handwriting on the page indicating how to double the recipe ... so I must have used this recipe in the past! So I followed it to the letter, including the part where I had to add 1/4 cup of vegetable shortening.

Two tins of finished butter spritz's

Each batch was supposed to make about 5-6 dozen cookies, so I figured I would have plenty for Jesse and possibly even some to freeze ahead for Christmas. I started with Christmas trees, used green food coloring, almond extract, and baked them according to the directions. They smelled kind of strange, the dough tasted nasty, and as they came out of the oven and I tasted them, they tasted ... well ... they tasted exactly like the vegetable shortening smelled ... yucky! I had Mr. Jones taste one and he had no comment, a very bad sign when he is eating something that is supposed to be sweet and yummy!

The second batch I baked were flowers, and I used raspberry jam in the dough and used coconut-extract (like it called for in the alternative recipe), red food coloring (to make the dough kind of pink), and I put a candied cherry (cut in quarters) in the center of each flower, sprinkled it with red-colored sugar -- so pretty! I thought maybe the first batch tasted awful because I used too much almond extract. Surely, this batch would taste as good as the cookies looked! Sigh! Absolutely wrong. This batch tasted just as terrible as the first ... they tasted exactly the way the vegetable shortening smelled! So I went to bed Saturday night with one of those depressed frames of mind that comes after having spent 4-5 hours failing at something that should have been pretty easy to accomplish. I consoled myself with thinking that perhaps the cookies would magically taste better in the morning.

They did not ... !!

Sunday afternoon, I decided to have another go at it. I called my Aunt Jan in Detroit to see if she had my grandmother's recipe. I surely did not want to spend another 4-5 hours working on baking cookies that I could not possibly send ... or eat ... needless to say, the first two batches went in the trash! My Aunt Jan said she could "search" for my grandma's recipe, but it would take awhile for her to find it. I then remembered that my cousin Lois was known to bake these cookies each Christmas and do them right, and she lives right here in Grand Rapids. So I called her, but no one was home! By this time, Mr. Jones had produced his own cookie press (NOT battery-powered) and the recipe that came with it. No mention of vegetable shortening at all, and double the butter! So I looked in two of my cookbooks, found two different recipes, none of which required any vegetable shortening at all.

So PLAN B went into effect. It's always good to have a Plan B, don't you think? I decided that since this box needed to be mailed by Tuesday, I would try a different spritz recipe, bake two batches (instead of four) and make some fudge for the other two tins. Success -- whew -- well, at least as far as the cookies were concerned. I haven't made the fudge yet. I found a "no fail" recipe for fudge on the side of a jar of marshmallow cream in the grocery store and intend to make fudge tomorrow morning for the other two tins ... I'm too tired tonight! I made a nice roast beef dinner for Dylan and two of his roomates tonight, along with a nice dessert. We had a good time eating together over here at the Jones Junction. I didn't take any pictures because I didn't want Dylan's roomates to feel "odd" with me snapping pictures during dinner ... there is something hokey about taking pictures of everything, all the time, even though that is my inclination ... so no dinner pictures.

But back to the vegetable shortening. DO NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES use vegetable shortening when making butter spritz cookies ... it's just plain nasty! It says on the side: "This shortening is made from the finest vegetable oils (soybean and cotton seed) which are partially hydrogenated. To maintain freshness, mono- and diglycerides are added for better cake baking." I'll tell you what! They can keep their soybean and cotton seed oil, and I will just stick with butter from now on! I hope I don't mess up the fudge recipe ...