Mother's Poinsettias (Christmas)

These Christmas cookies are tiny works of art: red poinsettia flowers piped from a cookie press with hand-shaped green leaves and a silver dragee in the center of each bloom. They look like they came from a European bakery, but they’re built on a simple butter cookie dough.

The dough is a classic spritz base: butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and almond extract, with just enough flour to hold its shape through the press. The almond extract is what gives these their distinctive flavor. It’s subtle but unmistakable, and it sets them apart from plain vanilla cookies.

The process has two stages. Green-tinted dough gets hand-rolled into tapered leaf shapes and flattened with a fork dipped in powdered sugar. Then the red-tinted dough goes through the cookie press’s sunburst plate to form the flower on top of each leaf cluster. A toothpick indentation in the center holds the silver dragee in place.

Kitchen Tips

• The dough must be soft enough to pass through the cookie press without straining. If it’s too stiff, add a tablespoon of softened butter. If too soft, add flour a quarter cup at a time.
• Do all the leaves first, then add the flowers. Working in stages keeps your hands clean between colors.
• Dip the fork in powdered sugar before pressing the leaves. This prevents sticking and gives them a frosty, sugared surface.
• Bake just 10 minutes. These should stay pale with the faintest hint of gold at the edges. Overbaking browns the colors and dulls the red.

Variations

• Use white dough for the flowers and dust with edible glitter for a snowy winter poinsettia.
• Replace almond extract with lemon extract for a citrusy twist.
• Skip the press and pipe the flowers using a star tip for a slightly different petal shape.