Shortbread Stamped Cookies (recipe 1)

Shortbread Stamped Cookies - made December 30, 2020 from Roti N Rice

Last Christmas, my friend Bennett unexpectedly sent me this embossed rolling pin as a gift. Little did she (or I) know what a new obsession she was going to spark.

I have always wanted one of these but thought I had "enough" baking stuff. LOLOLOL. What a concept. An erroneous one as it turns out. I love this thing. Love.

But the tricky thing is finding a good recipe where the cookies don't spread and you don't lose the impressions from the embossing. Thus began my journey to find such a recipe. Be prepared for similar posts to come on this topic.

Thankfully, this one wasn't a bad one to start with. But before you can have the fun of embossing the dough, you have to roll it out perfectly smooth, even and flat. Thanks to Dorie Greenspan, I learned the trick of rolling out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper. The parchment prevents sticking, allows you to roll out to an even thickness and you don't have to use a ton of flour to get it rolled out smoothly, thus enabling you not to add too much flour to the dough and potentially change the composition of the cookie texture.

Once you have your dough rolled out smoothly, make sure you chill it before and after the first rollout. This will help prevent (too much) sticking with the embossed rolling pin as well as make better impressions on the dough.

Did I mention how much I love this embossed rolling pin? Look how pretty the pattern is! Once you have the dough embossed, you can cut it out in any shape(s) you desired. I went with a round cutter with scalloped edges for a little more prettiness. I'm not good at decorating cakes or cookies so it's kinda exciting to turn out something this pretty. (Hey, I've been in lockdown for over a year, it doesn't take much to make me happy at this point - pretty cookies will do it.)

This was the scrap piece of dough which I couldn't resist embossing too

It's a bit hard to tell from the pictures but the pattern on the baked version, while not as sharply delineated as on the unbaked dough, didn't spread out too much and held up pretty well.

Here's what the underside looks like so you can see approximately what color you want to bake it until. As with most shortbread, you don't want to underbake too much or the texture won't be right but you also don't want to overbake it to too dark either. Flavor-wise, this was also good. It's hard to beat buttery shortbread.

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup rice flour

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1. Combine all-purpose flour and rice flour in a medium bowl. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and powdered sugar until creamy and blended. Add the flour mixture in two additions, mixing briefly after each addition until just combined.
2. Divide dough in half and shape each half into a disk. Place one disc in the center of a large piece of parchment paper. Cover with another large piece of parchment paper and roll out to an even thickness, about 1/8 - 1/4" thick. Place in refrigerator to chill for 30-60 minutes. Repeat with second disc.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. Remove from refrigerator and peel off top sheet of parchment. Run over with embossed rolling pin or cookie stamp(s) and cut embossed dough into desired shapes. Space evenly onto prepared baking sheets.
5. Bake each baking sheet for 18-20 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely.