FoodBlogSwap: Chocolade Spritsen

After the week of salad recipes things got quiet again on the blog. My school work swallowed me up again and the last week is the most busy one. I was thinking how I would fit in writing this FoodBlogSwap post in my busy schedule, but it seems I can't sleep this night. So I decided that I would sit down and just write it now, at 4am.

Last month I got totally out of my comfort zone with baking Gevulde koeken, a Dutch treat filled with almond paste. And this month it is no different. I was looking around at Kopje Thee, the assigned blog for this month, when I almost immediately saw what I would like to try: Chocolade Spritsen. Another Dutch treat that was on my to try list for ages, but I shied away from because of working with a pastry bag is kinda scary for me. But spritsen are one of Nick's favorite cookies, so we had to try it! We did replace the margarine with real butter, because that is the kind we like best.

It didn't go smoothly the first time around. Nick actually made the batter, and I was supposed to work the pastry. But it turned out the dough was too thick for me to handle because I haven't got much strength in my hands. So Nick worked the pastry too. We tried zig zag and round spritsen but they came out thin. It seemed that Nick forgot to add the baking powder, so with the second batch we added that in and some milk and they came out a lot better, as you can see below. So don't forget the baking powder and adding some milk surely makes it easier to squeeze the pastry out of the bag.

Chocolade Spritsen: (makes about 25) 
- 300 gr butter
- 200 gr light brown castor sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 sachets vanilla sugar
- 450 gr flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- some milk
- a pinch of salt
- about 100 gr milk chocolate (we used less, but were only able to coat half of our cookies with it)

Melt the butter in the microwave, but make sure it doesn't boil. Mix butter and sugar until you have a creamy mixture. The add in the egg, vanilla sugar and salt. Sift baking powder and flour together and add this gradually to the butter mixture. Lasly see how thick your dough is and add in some milk.

Line your baking tray with parchment paper. Squeeze the dough out of the pastry bag in a zigzag motion or in a circle. Leave the dough to rest for an hour. Pre heat the oven to 175 degrees. And bake the cookies for about 20-25 minutes. Leave them to cool completely.

Melt the chocolate au-bain-marie and dip half of each cookie in the melted chocolate.

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