Stamped Cookies #9 (Hello Kitty cookies)

Stamped Cookies #9 - made dough October 26, 2021 from If You Give a Blonde a Kitchen 

3 cups (375 grams) all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup shortening

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

2 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together shortening and sugar until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes. Beat in egg, milk and vanilla until just combined. Add in flour mixture in 2 additions, beating on low speed, until just combined after each addition. Do not overbeat.
3. Form dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least one hour.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Portion chilled dough into balls about 1 1/2" in diameter. Slightly flatten the balls and stamp with a flour-dusted stamp.
6. Evenly space on prepared baking sheets and bake for 8 - 10 minutes or until edges are golden. Cool for 5 minutes on baking sheet then transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

My cookie stamping interest obsession continues. I bought these Hello Kitty stamps awhile back with the idea of doing a Hello Kitty-themed care packaged for my friends with kids. I finally got a chance to use them when a good friend mentioned how much her daughter likes sweets and cats. Serendipity.

I wanted to try this recipe since it's made with shortening, rather than butter, and past experience has shown me that cookies made with shortening tend to spread less and have a more crisp texture. I'm not convinced that taste-wise, shortening is better than butter (it isn't) but I really wanted the Hello Kitty impressions to still be distinct even after baking.

One thing I've found with trying out various recipes for cookie stamping is they'll almost all show beautiful impressions from the stamps when you press them into the dough. But the true test is how the cookies will look after baking. Too often, the impressions aren't as sharp or clear as before baking.

This dough turned out to be a little fragile and I wonder if I should've used more flour in it. I went by the weight measurements of the original recipe which are supposed to be more accurate. But the dough was soft, even after chilling, and a bit fragile. The sharp-eyed among you will notice the Hello Kitty in the bottom left of the picture below is missing her (stage) left arm. Yeah, that must've fallen off when I put them in the freezer. 

You definitely want to freeze these first and handle carefully. Then bake at initial high heat to let the cookies set and not spread so you can keep the impressions as clear as possible. With this dough, it's best to use cookie stamps that don't have a lot of intricate detail as those might blur out in baking. 

This kept the Hello Kitty impressions pretty well but I'm not sure it would work with more intricately detailed cookie stamps.

As for taste, when I first ate a taste test cookie while it was still a little warm, I thought it was "okay". I was missing the butter. I had used butter-flavored shortening but that's not the same as real butter.

However, when I ate another cookie at room temperature, I liked it much better. The texture was crisp and the taste was pretty good. And okay, I also used two cookies and sandwiched them with cookie butter. But I swear, the cookies themselves also tasted better at room temperature.

The final step was to vacuum seal them so they would arrive in fairly good shape. I made two cookie sandwiches, sandwiched with Nutella, but left the rest plain to leave it up to my friend's daughter how she'd best like to consume them.