Embossed shortbread cookies

Good morning.  We finally have a break in the heat here in Kansas City.  Today the high temperature will be only 90 F, after having several days at around 100 F.  And the entire upcoming week is set to be cooler.  Maybe the worst of the heat is now behind us.  Fingers crossed.

This coming weekend there is no weekly menu offering.  I'm taking the week off to focus on some new foods that are being added to the menu.  The first weekend of August we will have molasses spice cookies on the menu.  And also you can order something new, appearing on the menu for the first time:  peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and peanut butter candies.  I hope you'll give them a try.  So far everyone who has sampled them has said good things.  I certainly think they're good, but of course I'm very biased.

Yesterday for the time I played with a new kitchen "toy" sent to me by oldest daughter.  It is a rolling pin for making embossed cookies.  It's made by a company called Nordic Ware which was established in Minnesota after World War II, specializing in Scandinavian cookware products.  If you go to their website and read the "Heritage" section, you can read how it was started by a husband and wife team after he returned from deployment in World War II.  

Well, I followed the suggested recipe for shortbread cookies which was printed on the package.  And I gave it a shot.  I wasn't quite sure how hard to press as I rolled these.  And since this was a recipe that was unfamiliar to me, I wasn't quite sure how the cookie would bake up.  Would the embossment be lost if the cookie puffed a little?  That was my question.  A good shortbread cookie will not puff up like many other cookies will.  But I wouldn't be sure about this one until the first tray came out of the oven.

I baked up all the cookie dough and here are a few examples of what came out of the oven.

Not bad for the first try using this new rolling pin.  I looked at the website and saw some of the examples in photos there.  Those pictures show a cookie with a little deeper embossment.  Comparing those to mine, I can see that I can press much more firmly.  And I will either modify that recipe or use a different one.  I prefer a cookie that is a little different than the one that results from the suggested recipe on the site.

Anyway, I'll try these again sometime soon, and let everyone see the results.

Today, I have several things to make.  In fact, this whole week, since it's my last week of break before getting to teaching, I will be cooking a lot of different things.  And some new items will be updated to the menu as well.  

You'll see it all discussed here in my next posts.  Stay cool!