Boomers Might Remember This Genius Retro Cookie Tool

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Boomers come from a different culinary era than today's young people. They were prone to use powdered milk as an ingredient more often, and they supped on old-school diner meals like chicken a la king that are all but forgotten today. When Boomers — or, more likely, their parents — baked cookies in the '60s and '70s, they perhaps used a tool that might cause a few second glances today, despite the fact that it still is very much in existence. That is a cookie press, also sometimes called a "cookie gun." The old-fashioned ones really did resemble oversized, cartoon-y pistols with barrels and triggers, so the name was apt!

A cookie press was (and still is) a tool that helps home bakers pipe perfect cookies ... at least, in theory and with some practice. In an age that predated social media inspo, midcentury bakers could load their cookie dough into the barrel of the cookie press and, with the deft press of the trigger, would pipe out uniformly shaped cookies that were sure to impress friends, family, and maybe even rival homemakers. Astoundingly, many of these retro cookie presses are still in use today. They were made of metal, which means that the durability factor was unmatched. Did they actually make baking cookies easier or make the end results prettier? That question is up for discussion.

There was definitely a learning curve inherent in using old-fashioned cookie presses. If your dough was too warm, it could ooze. If it was too cold, you'd never be able to press it through the discs that shaped the cookies. Furthermore, the intricate parts involved made presses somewhat hard to clean effectively. Scrub them too hard, and you risked breaking the small inner workings. If you didn't clean them well enough, you'd get gunk in your cookies.

If you want to bake cookies nowadays — maybe in the air fryer? — you have the option of buying a newfangled cookie press. These are not used as often as they were in their '60s and '70s heyday, when they were a novelty, and are made a bit different. The cookie presses of today are made mostly of plastic and are allegedly easier to hold and clean. The OXO Good Grips 14-Piece Cookie Press Set has the overwhelming majority of ratings and reviews on Amazon, indicating that it is today's gold standard for successors to the shiny metal cookie gun of Grandma's time. 

That said, about 20% of reviews for this product complain about some aspect of this tool, whether it's the durability (again, these aren't metal parts!) or the uniformity of the cookies it produces. If you want to make fancy cookies, you may just be better off leaving the cookie press in the past and sticking with more modern methods like a piping bag or the bottom of a pattern glass.