Once Upon A Time Recipes

I'm joining Cathy again at her blog A Bit of the Blarney for her 'Once Upon A Time Recipe' post.

This week it's my Grandma's recipe for Spritz cookies.
My family lives in New York but my Dad's parents lived in Minnesota, and when we were very young they used to make the trip to New York twice a year, they would fly here at Christmas time and stay for a week or two, and then they would drive here in the summer and stay for another two or three weeks. As we got a little older though they only made the summer trip, so while we didn't have a visit from them to look forward to at Christmas, we did look forward to the package that would arrive from them just before Christmas! And it never disappointed, because it was packed full with my grandmother's wonderful chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, and spritz cookies! (And, amazingly, my grandmother would line shirt boxes with cling wrap, put the cookies in them, then wrap them in brown paper, tie them with string, address them to us, mark them as fragile, and they arrived intact!! Can you imagine trying to mail cookies in that way today???).

Anyway, soon after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother moved to New York, and she continued her tradition of baking tons of cookies for Christmas, and every Christmas Eve we would all pile in on her and gobble them down! As the years went on it got to be too much for her to keep up with all the baking though, and she passed her recipes on to us. I was also gifted her cookie press:






In the past this cookie press has worked beautifully, but just this past week when I tried it, the top kept popping off! No matter how careful I thought I was threading the top, it still popped off, so while these cookies tasted like my Grandma's spritz cookies, they looked nothing like they are supposed to look (little pretzel-shaped spritz cookies):



I've been told that Grandma's cookie press has seen it's better days and that it is now time to invest in a new cookie press, but somehow I just can't give up on Grandma's old one.
This weekend I will try again, and my husband promises to be around so he can try his hand at affixing the top of this very old (but I refuse to believe it's now useless and obsolete) cookie press. Wish us luck.

Grandma's Spritz Cookies:

1/2 lb. Butter (softened)
2/3 Cup Sugar
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 Cups Flour

Cream butter, gradually adding sugar.
Beat in egg yolks and extract.
Gradually blend in flour.

Put cookie dough through cookie press, making a small pretzel shape. Bake at 350 degrees, 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on rack.

Enjoy!