A very special cookie for all of your Spring and Summer events

 

Last Wednesday evening my Nevada daughter messaged me on Instagram to ask about this recipe.  Her young daughter had a piano recital coming up and Joanna wanted to make these cookies to add to the refreshments at the recital.  

It's so appropriate!  Decades ago,  I made these cookies for the piano recitals of all three children. They were a great favorite on the refreshment table! In fact, they became such a favorite of the kids' piano teacher that I frequently presented her with a tin of these as an end-of-the year gift. These cookies are quite a bit of work, but the impressively delicious results are worth it!

The recipe (which I originally found in a Farm Journal cookie cookbook) ended up being published in another cookbook, The Wellesley Cookie Exchange Cookbook. This came about in an interesting way.  

 

Our children's piano teacher was an elderly lady with many students.  One of the families whose children took lessons from her lived in a large and beautiful home and they offered their music room, complete with baby grand piano, as a recital venue.  

I wanted to bring cookies as elegant as the surroundings, so I tried this recipe.  And the hostess enjoyed them so much that she asked if she could have the recipe.  Friends of hers held an annual cookie exchange and she thought these cookies were special enough to share.  Later when Yankee published the cookbook, this wonderful recipe was included.

 SPRITZ CHOCOLATE SANDWICHES

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Buttery Chocolate Frosting:
3 Tblsp. butter, softened
4 1/2 Tblsp. unsweetened baking cocoa
3/4 tsp. vanilla
Dash of salt
3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
About 6 Tblsp. light cream or evaporated milk

1 cup chopped walnuts

For dough, beat butter until light; gradually add sugar, beating after each addition. Beat until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla to blend well. Sift together flour and salt; gradually add to creamed
mixture, mixing well.

Put star plate in cookie press. Working with one-fourth of the dough in the press at a time, press out strips of dough about 2 1/2 inches long about an inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 400° for 6 to 8 minutes or until very delicately browned.  Remove cookies to cooling rack at once.

For Buttery Chocolate Frosting,
combine the butter and cocoa. Beat in vanilla, salt, sugar, and enough light cream to make frosting of spreading consistency. When cookies are cool, put them together in pairs with frosting between. Dip ends of sandwiches in the frosting and then in the chopped nuts. Allow frosting to set before packaging or storing cookies. Makes about 5 dozen sandwich cookies.

A note on the quantity of cookies this recipe will produce.  The original recipe says it makes 69 sandwich cookies.  I had adjusted it to say 5 dozen, which would of course be 60 sandwich cookies.  However, when Joanna made these, she found she only got about 30 sandwich cookies (2 1/2 dozen).  So when making these, be aware that the quantity of cookies can vary greatly depending upon how large you make them.  

Jerusha  about to press cookies

Finished product!

It's so much fun that these cookies are being served at a second generation of piano recitals!