A few months back, I made yet another King Arthur Flour cookie accessory purchase – the Chocolate Butter Cookie Set. This set included a rectangular cookie stamp and delightful chocolate molds that produced international, vintage-style post stamp-like images. While the cookie set sat unused for a few months, I finally came up with the perfect occasion to put it to use – a friend's summer birthday party.
I am so happy when I put this great set to use. I can definitely use these stamps every season, for any type of special event. I've never produced such professional-looking cookies, and while they can be a bit time consuming because of the limited number of chocolate molds, these aren't nearly as overwhelming as a number of other baked goods I have made. In fact, I may even make these cookies, following the King Arthur Double Chocolate Butter Cookies recipe, again this weekend!
Details on their preparation below.
I first started the process by heating Ghirardelli white chocolate wafers that do not require tempering (lazy I know), and then poured chocolate by the tablespoon into the molds. I then tapped each mold a bit, to make sure the chocolate spread evenly into the molds. I refrigerated each mold for approx. 15 – 20 minutes until cool before popping the chocolates out and restarting the process.
After I started the chocolate topping preparation, I put together the cookie dough, which required beating the wet ingredients together while sifting the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. I used all Dutch process cocoa instead of a half black cocoa, which I did not have nor could find at the store, and half Dutch process mix.
Then I combined the wet and dry ingredients, and shaped into a square form to chill.
After the dough square chilled, I rolled out into an 1/8-inch thick circle or square, and then used the stamp to start cutting out cookie shapes. I had the most difficulty with this step because it was a very hot day, and the cookie dough kept sticking to the stamp, making it hard to get good-looking cookies. I had to re-chill the dough, and when that didn't quite work, I put some sugar on the inside of the stamp to make it easier to release the cookie shapes.
Finally, after baking the cookies for 10 minutes and cooling them, it was time for assembly! This was the most fun part, to see how wonderful and professional these cookies looked.
The only slight downside of these cookies was a personal preference – I wish the cookies themselves were harder and more dry (this recipe produced fairly soft cookies) to complement the hard chocolate toppings a la store-bought double chocolate European cookies. However, others really liked the textural contrast of these two-part cookies, so seems like you can't go wrong with making these for any occasion.
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