Stamped Cookies #33 Buttery Shortbread Cookies from Weekend at the Cottage

Stamped Cookies #33 Buttery Shortbread Cookies - made dough October 27, 2023, modified from Weekend at the Cottage

3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1/8 cups (17 tablespoons) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 18 tablespoons

1 egg white (if dough is too dry or floury)

1 teaspoon vanilla butter emulsion (if dough is too dry or floury)

granulated or icing sugar for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Pulse oats in food processor until finely chopped. Transfer to mixing bowl and add flour, cornstarch, sugar and salt.
3. Transfer back to food processor and add butter pieces. Run on low setting until shortbread dough forms
4. Turn out dough onto workspace and divide in half. Wrap one half in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator. Roll out second half into desired thickness and cut or stamp out cookies. Transfer stamped cookies to lined baking sheet and chill or freeze while you roll out and stamp the second half of the dough.
5. Bake cookies, one sheet at a time, for 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheet for several minutes before transferring cookies to wire rack to cool completely. Sprinkle with granulated or icing sugar if desired.

New cookie stamp alert! This time, this set of silicone Disney cookie stamps. They're available from Williams Sonoma as of this writing. After Snoopy and Hello Kitty (and friends), I can't resist a good Disney stamp.

You can see this recipe held the stamped impressions beautifully. The dough was a little hard to work with as it was rather dry. I had to switch from using my food processor to my Kitchen Aid stand mixer and I had to add a teaspoon of vanilla butter emulsion and an egg white before the dough came together. Otherwise it was just a floury mixture that didn't bind together. I suggest trying to make the recipe without the emulsion and the egg white and only adding one or both of those if your dough won't come together without it.

The upside is the impressions held so well after baking. The downside? This doesn't have a lot of flavor. That's the challenge of some of the stamped cookie recipes. You can get around it a couple of ways. One is to make the cookies thinner and then sandwich them with nutella or cookie butter to amp the flavor of the whole cookie. The other is to use a flavored oil or extract to add more flavor. I made mine too thick so next time I'm going to roll out the dough much thinner and make these as sandwich cookies.