Cookie Experts' Advice Needed!!

[Sparkly]

Hello! I haven't been on this forum in a loooong time, and hope you're all living and eating well!!

I volunteered to make cookies for a baby shower. It's a "British tea" (plus Mimosas and Bloody Marys!?) with a theme of roses. I found a mold for making rose cookies, like this one:

I tried it out today, using a recipe I found here: https://simplebites.net/beautiful-brown-sugar-molded-cookie-recipe/

1. It was extremely time-consuming because each cookie had to be made individually (rolled out and/or into the mold, removed, and then trimmed, resembling the top thing on the cookies pictured without the round base). Very difficult to get in and out of the mold. Wrong method for this type of mold?

2. The cookie recipe might exclude leavening in order to maintain the mold shape (no puffing up), but they came out hard as bricks! I'd be afraid of dental emergencies at the shower. Wrong recipe?

3. In looking up other recipes, I saw shortbread cookies that are rolled into balls, then stamped with flat, round 'embossers.' That seems great for avoiding the hassle of rolling out dough, the toughness that comes from reworking it, and the time involved. I found a few cookie stamps with rose images, but they are rather expensive!

Any suggestions welcome, and thanks in advance!

[radical noodle]

1. Not sure this will help but...

I have a set of recipes that are step by step with photos. The molded cookie this set has uses a recipe for Speculaas cookies. I have made these cookies and they were very good, but I didn't use a mold, I just cut them in cute shapes. If you'd like the recipe, I'd be happy to type it up. It does say to chill the dough and also chill the molds and to use a floured rolling pin to roll out the dough before you use the mold. If you're not familiar with speculaas cookies, they're a kind of a spicy cookie. (If you remember those cookies shaped like windmills, those are speculaas cookies.)

[Sparkly]

3. I love those! But...

... I'd love to avoid rolling out and cutting, if possible. Thank you, though!!

[Kali]

2. stamping shortbread sound easy and delicious

in my family we have a wonderful set of wood block stamps from India that have been used for everything from cookies to inking paper and cloth, to stamping clay for ornaments. good old plain sugar cookie recipe should work as well as shortbread.

[Sparkly]

4. Yes, like that!

Do you remember how your family acquired them?

[Kali]

5. maybe at cost plus or pier 1 back in the 70s? LOL

it is just possible we got them in Mexico as they might pass for Mexican folk art too. there are a couple of stylized flowers, a horse, a lion, a bird or two, maybe some kind of leaf. my sister has them now. she was stamping clay with them a few years ago, I have a glazed horse ornament somewhere.

[Sparkly]

7. Very cool!

Amazing they withstood all those uses! I've seen fancy terra cotta ones -- with shipping $20+ and more when imported... This event is not worth that level of investment.

[Kali]

9. just saw some Polish wooden ones for $10

not sure what the shipping is, but they have the rolling pins too

https://polishpotterywestlake.com/products/cookie-stamp-bold-folk

[Kali]

6. google "cookie stamps"

some of the results are molds but lots of different stamps too

[Sparkly]

8. Yes, my hair started to hurt!

That's why I came here!

Maybe I can try the same mold again with a more cake-like dough, not such a dense one?

[Kali]

10. I suspect the difference is the depth of the carvings

and that is why the molded ones are so much work - deeper design and needing to press the individual cookie into it rather than just hitting the surface with a shallower carving.

flour well or maybe experiment with corn starch?