Heart-Stamped Shortbread Cookies (Stamped Cookies #19)

Heart-Stamped Shortbread Cookies (Stamped Cookies #19) - made dough January 6, 2022, modified from Kelly's Kitchen Creation 

1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Fillings: optional and can use jam, jelly, Nutella, cookie butter, ganache

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar together until well combined and no butter lumps remain, 2-3 minutes. Add vanilla and mix to combine. Add flour and salt in two additions, beating on low speed after each addition until fully combined and dough forms.
2. Divide dough in half, wrap each half in plastic wrap and chill for 20-30 minutes. Working with one half at a time, lightly flour a clean work surface and roll out dough to 3/8" thickness. Press with cookie stamp. Arrange stamped cookies on a cookie sheet, cover and chill or freeze for 20 minutes.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Space cookies evenly on prepared sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Remove from oven and pipe with filling. Warm filling slightly in a sealed ziploc bag in the microwave (15-20 seconds should do it, depending on your filling), cut a corner of the bag with the warm filling and pipe into the center of the cookies.

You're going to see (and have been seeing) some schmaltzy heart-themed posts on my blog in an early lead up to Valentine's Day. I had to bake and ship them early enough to arrive by or before Valentine's Day. I don't usually do schmaltz but I made these for Valentine's-themed care packages for Soldiers Angels/deployed military service members. Which in itself felt a little weird as technically I don't personally know any of the service members yet I'm sending them packages of heart-shaped cookies in Valentine's Day boxes. No cupids or schmaltzy romance going on here; I was just going along with the Hallmark holiday for the troops, spreading some love for their service.

Plus, let's be honest, I love using these thumbprint cookie stamps from Williams Sonoma. (I am not affiliated with Williams Sonoma and don't get anything if you click on the link and buy/don't buy.) Besides the hearts, there's the rectangular one and the circular one. I love all three. I didn't fill the centers for the ones I sent in the care packages but I did include individual packets of peanut butter in case they wanted to fill on their own.

The dough handled beautifully in terms of making the thumbprint impressions. Unfortunately, they didn't bake quite as well as they handled. You can see they browned unevenly and, if you look closely, parts of the dough puffed up, noticeably in the indents from the thumbprint molds. 

That means a little too much air was beaten into the dough and the puffiness came from the release of that air during baking. In hindsight, I should've let the butter come closer to room temperature so I wouldn't have had to beat it as much to get the (cold) lumps out.

As with all stamped/molded/embossed cookies, I also baked at a higher temperature to set the impressions quickly at higher heat and prevent spread. Unfortunately that means the cookies will brown faster as well. It's not the end of the world but does take away from the visual appeal.

Fortunately, none of those visual issues affected the taste. These cookies tasted really good, nice and buttery. I filled them with cookie butter and that hid the uneven browning and puffing with the indents.

Overall, these were good and well worth making again. Next time I'm going to try baking at a lower temperature and turning the pans around halfway through baking, something I don't normally do, but think it'd be worth it to get a more even baking appearance.