Butter cookies with churrera

These butter cookies are made with our churrera . What do you think? A churrera is very similar to a cookie gun in how it works: a tube with a plunger that pushes the dough through a die. A little force and little mystery.

These cookies are what have always been called tea biscuits , with a sandy consistency that melts in your mouth due to the huge amounts of butter they contain. They are delicious and also leave an aroma in the house that makes the whole neighborhood happy.

We give you some tips to make them perfect, following the recipe from one of my favorite websites, Serious Eats :

1. You have to aerate the butter a lot with the sugar and continue aerating after adding the egg.
2. However, it is best to mix the flour by hand, with a silicone spatula .
3. If we want to go all out (because we're worth it), we'll put the baking trays we're going to use in the fridge beforehand and, in any case, we won't use mats or baking paper, just the greased tray, nothing more.

And I add:

1. It is important that the butter and the egg are at a similar temperature. It is not advisable for the egg to be cold from the refrigerator.
2. We will test the consistency of the dough after adding the flour; if it is too sticky we will have to add flour a spoonful at a time.

ILSA metal churrera , KitchenAid Artisan robot bowl, T&G acacia wood tray and Laura Ashley espresso cups with saucers

Ingredients ( for about 30 cookies, depending on size)

• 225 g of softened butter, but not at room temperature
• 200 g of white sugar
• 1 egg at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 g of salt
• 350 g of pastry flour

Elaboration

1. We heat the oven to 175° and place two or three baking trays in the refrigerator.
2. Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat at high speed until it increases in volume and turns white, for at least 7 minutes. The mixture should remain matte at all times , with the butter not melting. Be careful in summer, because if the mixture starts to shine, put the bowl in the fridge for a few minutes.
3. Add the egg and continue beating at high speed, scraping the sides of the mixture from time to time to ensure it is perfectly homogenized, again for 5 to 7 minutes, until obtaining a silky and airy dough.
4. We sift the flour and add it to the bowl. We mix very superficially with the robot, add the salt and vanilla , and finish mixing by hand, with a spatula .
5. Be careful, because the consistency of the dough is important so that the cookies are sufficiently solid, do not spread in the oven and come off the gun well. The dough should be adherent and very soft, but not stick too much to your fingers when you touch it.
6. Once the desired consistency is achieved, use the spatula to load the churrera . Attach the desired die and place the lid on.
7. We are going to form the biscuits on the refrigerated trays, which have only been greased with butter . This is the trickiest part: to form each cookie, you don't have to use a full stroke of the plunger, but only half of it. In other words, with each full stroke of the plunger, you can form two biscuits.
8. You have to get the hang of it to make sure the sizes are even, but it's a matter of practice. And this dough has one advantage: if a cookie turns out awful, all you have to do is remove the dough from the tray with a spatula and put it back in the churrera .
9. This churro gun allows us to change the die without having finished all the dough we have inside, at any time to make a different shape.
10. We will have to reload the gun several times, since the amount of dough in the recipe is greater than the capacity of the device.
11. We put the first tray in the oven and bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes depending on the strength of each oven, until they are golden around the edges. We take them out and with a metal spatula we transfer them to a rack .
12. We fill as many trays as necessary and cook the pasta in the same way.

These tea biscuits or butter cookies are addictive; vanilla gives them a wonderful touch, although we can also flavour them with citrus zest, ground very finely so that it doesn't bother you when extruding the dough, or with cinnamon. Although I have made them very simple, we can also decorate the cookies with sprinkles, with chocolate noodles, with cherries in the centre or dip them in chocolate once they are cold. Don't say we don't give you ideas.