Spritz Bredele

Dip these spritz bredele cookies into melted chocolate, and you have a delicious treat for your morning tea, an afternoon snack, or a perfect addition to your work or school lunchbox. Crumbly and buttery, these Alsatian cookies are a holiday favorite!

Eating the baking creations is the best part of baking. But what is even better than that are the memories you make while baking with your family. There is nothing quite like it!

And these spritz bredele cookies can gather all the family together to create those memories for years to come.

Whether your kids helping out in the kitchen or your spouse by your side as you bake together at night, there really isn't anything more special than spending time with loved ones while creating something delicious.

Spritz bredele cookies are a great choice to create those lasting memories.

Why? Because these are easy to make, and there is room for everyone to participate while making cookies.

This recipe makes a batch of classic spritz cookie dough. It is light, buttery, and has a lovely texture.

The idea of these Alsatian cookies is to make them small and of different shapes.

Then you can customize them in a way you desire to create a beautiful holiday cookie box.

With a variety of decorating options, you will never get bored! Dip them in melted white or dark chocolate, sprinkle with chopped pistachios, almonds, or shredded coconut.

So don’t wait for another time - start making new memories today. So pick up this spritz bredele cookie recipe and get started on building those endless memories right away!

Jump to:

• What is spritz bredele?
• Manual meat grinder vs. pastry bag
• Why you should try this recipe
• Ingredients
• How to make spritz bredele
• Recipe variations
• Storing spritz cookies
• Expert tips
• Frequently asked questions
• Love cookies? Try these next!
• Recipe card
• Comments

What is spritz bredele?

Bredele are traditional Christmas cookies from the Alsace region of France. They are also made in Lorraine and Germany.

Spritz bredele (also spelled as spritzbredele or spritzbredle) are called Christmas spritz (Spritz de Noël in French) or shortbread Viennese.

Spritz means "socket" and refers to the fluted shape of cookies. The literal translation of spritz bredele is "cakes socket."

Alsatians start making spritz bredele early in the Christmas season, sometimes even in November.

These cookies keep very well, so they are ideal for gourmet gifts. You can also hang them on a Christmas tree if you add a pretty ribbon.

Traditionally, they are shaped like a stick, letters S and U, ring, candy cane shape, or figure-eight shape, and, in short, an infinite number of shapes!

These days, more and more people are passing down their family recipes to future generations, and the bredele recipes are not an exception.

Manual meat grinder vs. pastry bag

You can make spritz bredele with both, a manual meat grinder or a pastry bag.

To make a huge batch of cookies during a holiday season, I would highly recommend getting a manual cookie maker (aka manual meat grinder). 

It comes with a special attachment to make cookies in four different shapes, including a special spritz nozzle.

You can also use an old-fashioned meat grinder hung on a table and a cookie attachment.

Or your KitchenAid stand mixer with a meat grinder attachment and a cookie attachment will make cookies in full swing.

Finally, you can go for an affordable cookie press from OXO or a top-quality Italian cookie press.

If you don't have any of the mentioned above and don't want to purchase an extra utensil in your already busy kitchen, there are two options for you:

• to use a pastry bag, or
• to use a festive cookie cutter.

Indeed, the spritz dough is thick enough, and piping with a piping bag is possible but is not easy.

In this case, you will need to add a little milk to the dough and use a reusable pastry bag made of thick cotton felt.

You should use a star-shaped tip (open star pastry tip) to make traditional spritz bredele.

It is possible if you decide to make cookies with a cookie-cutter. Just roll the dough out between two sheets of parchment and cut cookies with your favorite cookie cutters.

You will end up with the authentic taste of spritz bredele, but not their authentic shapes. But they will still be called brédelés in French.

Why you should try this recipe

1. This easy cookie recipe makes an excellent stocking stuffer or holiday gift for anyone on your shopping list.
2. Due to a long shelf life, you can make spritz cookies far in adavnce during a holiday season.
3. You can make a huge batch of cookies in a fairly short period of time.
4. Customization of cookies make them a great edible Christmas gift.

Ingredients

For ingredients and detailed instructions, refer to the recipe card below.

Butter: the spritz bredele recipe calls for unsalted butter, softened at room temperature.

Sugar: use granulated sugar or caster sugar to make the recipe.

Vanilla sugar (sucre vanillé in French): it brings a light vanilla flavor to spritz cookies.

Egg: use a large egg at room temperature.

Flour: the recipe calls for all-purpose flour.

Almond flour: use blanched almond flour (poudre d'amandes in French), not ground almonds made at home, or replace it with hazelnut flour/meal (poudre de noisettes) or coconut flour.

Baking powder: use fresh aluminum-free baking powder (levure chimique in French).

How to make spritz bredele

Preheat oven to 355 degrees F/180 degrees C. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Using a flour sifter, sift all-purpose flour with baking powder and set it aside.

To make cookie dough, place butter, granulated sugar, and vanilla sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk until the mixture becomes creamy (photo 1). Add the egg, mixing well.

Add the sifted flour mixture and almond flour to the principal preparation and work well to obtain a homogeneous and smooth dough (photo 2).

Transfer the dough to a manual cookie maker fitted with a cookie attachment (photo 3) and pass the dough to form sticks of about 3 inches/7 cm (photo 4). 

Make longer sticks to shape an S or U, a ring, a candy cane shape, and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.

Bake spritz cookies for 10 to 13 minutes, watching the baking (photo 5). The spritzbredele should be lightly browned. Cool cookies on a wire rack.

To decorate spritz cookies, melt chocolate in a double boiler or a microwave.

Drizzle cookies with melted chocolate (photo 6) or dip ⅓ of each cooled cookie into melted chocolate. Place on parchment paper until chocolate is set.

If desired, sprinkle cookies with chopped nuts, shredded coconut, or chopped freeze-dried raspberries.

Recipe variations

Here is a recipe for the classic spritz bredele cookies, but you can play with ingredients and decorations.

Want to try these cookies another way? Let's discover spritz cookies recipe variations.

First, instead of almond flour, it is possible to use hazelnut flour/meal or coconut flour to vary the tastes. 

Second, replacing 2 ½ tablespoons or 20 g of all-purpose flour with the same amount of cocoa powder is also possible to make chocolate spritz cookies. In this case, mix the cocoa powder with all the dry ingredients.

If you are a fan of cinnamon flavor, add a pinch of ground cinnamon to the spritz dough. You might add a little lemon zest or scraped vanilla seeds as well.

To make different cookies, you will need to divide the cookie dough into several different parts to add the flavors of your choice.

To pipe two-colored spritz cookies, place the light dough in a pastry bag, the chocolate dough in a second bag.

Cut the end of 1 cm and insert these two small pastry bags in a larger one, fitted with the open star tip.

To make it even more fun with cookies, sprinkle them with chopped nuts or flaked almonds before baking.

Or decorate your baked cookies by dipping them in melted chocolate with the flavors you like (milk, dark, white, ruby, etc.). Then enjoy your dipped spritz cookies!

Also, cover your cookies with chopped almonds, pistachios, freeze-dried raspberries, shredded coconut, poppy seeds, festive sprinkles, or chocolate vermicelli sprinkles.

But they are so delicious plain too. Just dip them in your morning coffee and enjoy.

So, go ahead, pamper yourself and also think about the people to whom you will make your cookie boxes during Christmas time!

Storing spritz cookies

These spritz cookies have a long shelf life. You can easily keep them in a metal cookie tin for two weeks or longer.

You can also freeze baked (undecorated) spritz bredele for several months. To thaw, bring cookies to room temperature.

Remember that it is not recommended to freeze cookies dipped in chocolate.

If you want to ship your frozen spritz cookies to loved ones, you can bring them to the post office while frozen. They will arrive defrosted and ready to eat.

Expert tips

1. Replace 2 ½ tablespoons (20 g) all-purpose flour with the same amount of cocoa powder to make a chocolate version of spritz cookies.
2. Bake your cookies one baking sheet at a time for the even baking.
3. Keep the piped cookies on a baking sheet in the refregirator while waiting to bring them into the oven.

Frequently asked questions

Love cookies? Try these next!

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Recipe card

The nutritional information has been calculated using an online recipe nutrition calculator such as Verywellfit.com and is intended for informational purposes only. These figures should be used as a general guideline and not be construed as a guarantee.