Then again, Americans have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the falsities of food that there’s actually a debate online over whether butter can be successfully substituted for shortening in xmas cookie recipes. For Crisco’s sake, butter has been around since the first udder squeezer realized you could whip cream into a solid state of bliss. Of course spritz cookies can use butter. Once upon a time whole squadrons of home economists had to be enlisted to convert all those time-honored butter recipes to use oil chemically converted into a scary solid. And now here we bake, baffled about the basics. The funny thing is that there is actually a fear-free substitute for shortening, the very ingredient it was invented to replace. It’s a four-letter word, but lard makes amazingly crisp cookies.