The Finest Option to Enhance Vacation Cookies Are With These Nordic Cookie Stamps

I hate frosting cookies. Completely detest it. In contrast to different, extra forgiving points of baking, for me, cookie adorning has a well-proven zero-percent probability of success. I’m an honest baker (test it) however by no means, not as soon as, have I managed to drag off a cute woodland creature or Christmas tree or butterfly or no matter that bears even a slight resemblance to the unique. In different phrases, I Nailed It.

However the factor is, I’ve youngsters, and children love adorning cookies. They dwell for it. Actually in case you gave them the choice of a visit to Disneyland (at present not an precise possibility), per week’s value of unfettered Netflix viewing (very a lot an possibility), and adorning a dozen cookies, it might be a tough toss up — which is just slightly ironic as a result of youngsters are literally horrible at adorning cookies. My son as soon as glued three miniature M&M’s to the higher left nook of a star cookie with a smear of blue frosting and you’d have thought he was Rembrandt.

I type of get it. A flowery cookie is barely extra satisfying and impressive-looking than a non-fancy cookie. However the effort to success ratio has simply by no means been value it for me — sugar icing is sort of all the time too runny or too stiff and it sticks to all the pieces, which is particularly crummy if you wish to pack and ship cookies to pals or household, the entire purpose you’re going by way of the difficulty of creating fancy-looking cookies anyway. And so I’ve to this point doomed my kids to a lifetime of squidgy spherical drop cookies and lumpy chocolate chips.

Enter: cookie stamps.

Lesley Suter

I had by no means in my life heard of those till a couple of years in the past, once I went searching for a sandwich cookie recipe for an Eater mission. I stumbled upon a King Arthur flour recipe for some maple shortbread cookies that, within the accompanying image anyway, appeared impossibly stylish, with lovely patterned, petal-like indentations that gave the shortbread a graphic pop however (and that is essential) with zero icing, frosting, or different annoying baubles.

Within the footnotes, the recipe talked about the “possibility” of utilizing Nordic cookie stamps to realize the identical look, which I instantly bought. For round $30 and some days wait, I grew to become the proud proprietor of a trio of stamps and set to work.

The very first thing I noticed concerning the superiority of cookie stamps is that there’s no must roll out the dough. (The rolling and chopping and re-rolling and re-cutting is another excuse why cookie baking is type of the worst.) With stamps, simply kind a couple of tablespoon’s value of dough into slightly ball and squish away. Just a few critiques had warned concerning the dough sticking to the stamps, however a fast dip of each the dough ball and the stamp in flour or powdered sugar helped with {that a} bit.

The cookies do nonetheless type of stick, however that’s how I found what’s inarguably the very best a part of cookie stamping: banging stuff! After you stamp the dough, give a couple of rhythmic however strong thwacks of the sting of the stamp on the kitchen counter and watch your cookie come out like magic. This time of yr, any excuse to work out slightly additional aggression is welcome. Doubly so if it includes a bunch of sugar and butter. (Simply ensure there’s no person attempting to nap close by.)

All in all, I discovered the cookie stamp expertise not solely means simpler and arguably fancier than frosting, nevertheless it was really enjoyable. Even the children (who stored asking when the rattling frosting was popping out) appreciated the enjoyment of slamming metallic and quartz collectively a couple of dozen instances. The ensuing cookies baked up completely, appeared very spectacular, and the little red-handled stamps themselves double as cute kitchen vacation decor. And now I get to be the one to ship obnoxiously good cookies to family and friends to overcompensate for the remainder of my life that’s a hellscape. Finest. $30. Ever.