Marlie's Vanilla Butter Springerle Cookies from Springerle Joy (Stamped Cookies #36)

Marlie's Vanilla Butter Springerle Cookies - made dough January 23, 2024 from Springerle Joy

250 grams butter, room temperature

150 grams confectioners' sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 large egg

450 grams all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, confectioners' sugar and vanilla extract until well combined and creamy. Add the egg and mix until well combined.
2. Add the flour and salt and mix on low speed until dough forms and no more floury streaks remain. Press into a thick disc and wrap completely in plastic wrap. Chill for 2 hours.
3. Once chilled, stamp cookies with your cookie stamps. I pinch off pieces of dough, roll into balls, flatten into discs, roll in granulated sugar then stamp each piece.
4. Chill or freeze stamped cookies for several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space cookies on baking sheets. Bake 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies, or until bottoms or edges are just beginning to turn light golden brown. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely. 

Yes, it's the season for schmaltzy hearts so I had to bust out my heart stamp. But I also still like my ladyfinger stamps so I had to use those as well to try out this recipe. I don't know that I would consider these real springerle cookies as they're not made the same way as traditional springerle and they don't taste the same. Rather, these are more like butter cookies. Truly good butter cookies that hold their impressions well and that's all I ask of a stamped cookie recipe.

The dough was a little soft after I mixed it so I did chill it for more than 30 minutes so it wouldn't stick to my cookie molds/stamps.

Then I froze the stamped cookies overnight to ensure the impressions would hold during baking. For the most part, they held really well. The design has some finer details that blurred a bit in baking but I was pretty pleased with how they turned out.

Taste-wise, these were what a good butter cookie should taste like. Make sure you use fresh butter as, well, it IS a butter cookie and that's what you're going to taste. I used Kerrygold as I find European butter has more flavor than American butter. I like to bake these until you can see the golden color at the edges so they caramelize a bit for more flavor. The texture is somewhere between not-quite-crunchy like a Biscoff cookie but not soft-chewy like a Crumbl cookie. It's somewhere in the middle of chewy-crunch. And good.