OXO Good Grips Cookie Press

We all love freshly baked cookies in our family. The smell of baking wafting from the kitchen brings everyone downstairs, and we all cannot wait to tuck in. I was thrilled to have a chance to test an OXO Good Grips Cookie Press, as I have read good reviews online and fancied trying it myself.

The cookie press has a large lever handle, which is comfortable and easy to use. It won't strain your hand, even after making several dozen of cookies. The base is non-slip, so gadget doesn't move when you keep dispensing the dough into the cookie shapes. The dough barrel is see-through so you know exactly how much of cookie dough is left inside.
Very easy to assemble and disassemble.

How does it work? You prepare the dough, fill in the barrel, close the lid with the lever tightly. Place the cookie press on the surface with the parchment paper, lower the lever and a cookie shape should appear on the paper. The cookies are supposed to be consistent in size and shape.

The cookie press comes with a selection of stainless steel disks which include a daisy, flower, sunflower, fleur-de-lis, butterfly, bear, heart, leaf, shell, snowflake, tree and wreath. Quite a choice, and would suit a seasonal baking session. I have tried most of the disks and found the heart and flower-shaped ones the easiest to work with.

OXO Good Grips Cookie Press disks

The cookie press comes with an instructions booklet which also features 3 starter recipes. I have chosen a recipe for Cream cheese spritz cookies, and followed the recipe exactly as it is.
I have encountered some difficulties with the cookie dough sticking to the disc and not to the parchment paper, as it is supposed to. The first batch was all the same, I had to gently prize off each cookie shape from the disk, which is not as it should have been.
While the cookies themselves were very tasty (as confirmed not just by my family but by friends too), they didn't quite look the part. They have baked into shapes which were not much recognisable as flowers.

I have tested several disks, the heart-shaped one was the easiest to use, but even heart-shapes dough was sticking to the disk. Once baked, the heart might have looked like hearts, but the butterfly and the sunflower changed into some amorphic shapes, as you can see from the photos below.

And though the cookies were delicious, I was not very happy with the aesthetic side. They were a far cry from the crisp-edged cookies I envisaged them to be. It is also quite possible that I have chosen a really hot day to do my baking, but perhaps the recipe for cream cheese spritz cookies was not the best one to use in a cookie press. Saying that, all the cookies - and there was a whole lot of them - were gone in a few days.

cream cheese spritz cookies

I don't easily give up. A couple of weeks later on a much cooler day, I decided to have another go with the cookies press, this time trying a different recipe. I started with a basic recipe for thumbprint cookies as appearing in Sweet Treats book (Williams-Sonoma) but ended up changing it quite a bit, adding some ingredients (skipping the jam) and adapting it to use with the cookie press.

Butter almond cookies before baking

Butter almond cookies
Ingredients:
zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
285g plain flour
1/2tsp baking powder
230g butter, melted
120g caster sugar
3tbsp ground almonds
1tbsp golden syrup
1 egg yolk
1tsp vanilla essence
Grate the zest of 1 lemon. In a medium bowl mix all the ingredients: lemon zest, flour, baking powder, melted butter, caster sugar, ground almonds, golden syrup, egg yolk and vanilla essence. You will get a pliable soft cookie dough.
Fill in the cookie press and press out all the cookies on the trays, covered with the parchment paper. Bake for about 10 minutes until golden brown. Don't overcook. The cookies will be still soft when you take the trays out, on cooling peel them off the paper. They will turn crispy and crumbly, and perfectly buttery.

Butter almond cookies

I found this cookie dough easier to use with the cookie press, which worked much better this time.
So, my advice would be: experiment and find which cookie recipe works for you.
I definitely want to try more recipes, and will let you know how it goes.

Camilla from Fab Food 4 All has also tested OXO Good Grips Cookie press and posted a delicious recipe for Danish Vanilla cookies (Vanille Cranse) on her blog. Her Danish cookies look splendid.


Disclosure: I received an OXO Good Grips Cookie Press for the purposes of testing and reviewing. All opinions are mine.