Watching someone use a cookie press feels like watching them cheat. Click, lift, and there’s a perfect little Christmas tree on the tray. Click again, and there’s another. Twenty biscuits in the time it takes to roll and cut out four.
Plenty of people’s first go ends with half the dough stuck inside the barrel, though. Almost always for one of two reasons, which are below.
What it actually is
A cookie press (or biscuit gun) is a tube you fill with soft dough. There’s a shaped disc on the end and a trigger on top. Each squeeze pushes out one biscuit’s worth of dough straight onto the tray. These are spritz biscuits, the buttery little shaped ones you see in Christmas biscuit tins.
The one with the most reviews on Amazon UK by a distance is the Wilton Preferred Press. It comes with:
- 12 discs, including a Christmas tree, wreath, snowman, heart, pinwheel and starburst. There’s a pumpkin and a turkey in there too, because it’s an American press.
- A soft-grip squeeze lever, so you’re not pumping a stiff plunger.
- A non-slip base on the barrel to help it sit flat on the tray while you press.
- 3 recipes made for the press, plus instructions for filling, using and cleaning it.
The two rules that make it work
1. The dough has to be right. Spritz dough is soft, buttery and smooth, with no chunks. Chocolate chips, nuts and bits of peel will jam the disc. If the dough’s too cold, it won’t push through. If it’s too warm and greasy, it won’t hold its shape. Use one of the recipes that comes with the press the first time, then experiment.
2. Press onto a bare, cool tray. This is the one that catches everyone out. The dough needs to stick to the metal so it lets go of the press when you lift it. No baking paper, no silicone mat, no grease. And if the tray’s still warm from the last batch, the butter melts on contact and nothing sticks. Have two trays on the go and let each one cool between batches.
Get those right and it’s genuinely quick. Get them wrong and you’ll be scraping dough out of the barrel and wondering why you bothered.
So who’s it for? If you make one batch of biscuits a year, cutters and a rolling pin are fine. If you bake for a crowd at Christmas, a cookie press is worth it. Think school fairs, teacher presents or tins for the neighbours. Kids like it too, since squeezing a trigger is easier than cutting shapes and peeling them off the worktop.
Spritz biscuits are small and bake quickly, so keep an eye on the first tray. If the bottoms catch before the tops colour, we’ve got a guide on why biscuits burn on the bottom that’ll help.
