Well making your own cookie dough is not the hard part of making decorated cookies....the dough comes together in a flash....but then you have to roll and cut it.
To preserve details and keep the cookies from puffing, I make my own dough and omit any baking powder or baking soda...

Shortbread cookies hold detail much better than sugar cookies because they don't rise or spread. They show stamps very well. As Linda said, it takes next to no effort to make and chill the dough. You have to roll out just the same. Alternatively, you can chill your dough as a log, like the bought kind, rolled in parchment or plastic film, and slice about 1/4" thick, and stamp those, but cutting out the shapes is more fun.

Can you maybe knead about 1/4 cup more flour into the bought sugar cookie dough to stiffen it so the imprints of your stamps will hold?

edie may have the only idea that will work. All refrigerated cookie dough that I have seen puffs up and spreads out, none will hold an imprint that I'm aware of.

Annie

When I make springerle cookies, the dough is quite dry. But then when you roll the special rolling pin designs onto the dough, you are supposed to put the cookies on the cookie sheet and let the tops dry overnight before baking them. That might help.

I agree with plllog...shortbread dough is really best for holding whatever shape(s) you want and showing detail. Shortbread dough is beyond easy to make and work with. Your stamps should work nicely. I have a collection of cookie molds (like the attached) I've used for shortbread for various occasions. Kind of fun to use.

Anyway, you might have more luck with the cookie cutters than the stamps with your sugar cookie dough. One thing you can try is make sure the cookies are well chilled when they go in the oven. No guarantees but it might help. It certainly can be done with sugar cookie dough, but I'm not sure about the store-bought kind. However it works, my guess is your granddaughter will be pleased. :-)

Thank you all. The cookie cutters I bought I am calling stamps because they are actually so shallow that I have a hard time imagining them cutting very well. The inside depth of the cutting rim is less than 1/4".

I bought this set at a resale shop because it had patterns I have not seen before. Lots of cats and my granddaughter has become fascinated with cats. She actually went through all her books to show me cat pictures last week after I showed her a picture of my cat on my phone. EVERY LAST BOOK.

I was actually thinking of using my shortbread recipe - which is so simple and so good. But I have never done anything with it other than to press it into a jelly roll pan and prick it with a fork. I have no idea if it could be rolled out. Wouldn't it crumble?

I can't find my Scottish nanny's recipe just now, but if I remember right, it's 4 cups of flour, a pound of salted butter and a cup of sugar. (Or 2 cups flour, half a pound of butter, and a half cup sugar if you're not feeding the whole neighborhood.) (This also agrees with the top hit on Google, so I think I got it right). If you don't want them to brown, bake a bit under 350° F.

I think molded shortbread has less flour.

Re crumbling, that may be part of the reason for chilling the dough first. Not only will it be firmer and easier to cut/stamp, but it gives a chance for the flour to absorb moisture. It should roll fine on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin. You can use a rolling sock if you like. It'll be harder to roll and crumblier than pie crust, but not much. Use a table knife to cut around the cookies if the cutters are too shallow to do more than mark them, though you can roll shortbread very thin, you want it thick enough for the character lines to show. Use a bamboo skewer or toothpick to clean out bits of dough from the crevices in the cutters so the stamps will be clear. Try to get as many cookies in a roll out as you can fit, because the flour added each roll out decreases the quality of the cut. Flour a solid pancake turner or bench knife to lift the cookies and put them on the baking tray. If you have one, an old fashioned thin aluminum baking sheet works best. No coatings, no colors, no paper (though you can use paper if you prefer). When the cookies are cool they should lift right off, perhaps with a little tug to the side.

Good luck with it all. I loved making and decorating shortbread cookies with my mother. I'm sure your granddaughter will adore the cats!

Also try rolling it between sheets of saran wrap of sheets of sil-pat....silicone baking mats.

If you really really really want to try the quick cookies that puff when they are baking, maybe you could experiment by baking a few and pressing the stamp into the cookie as soon as you take them out of the oven, while they are still puffy?? Just a thought,,,

The more I think about it, the more I think I should just go with shortbread. At least at the end of it I would have something that tastes good.

This is the shortbread recipe I’ve been using for years, which I just press into a pan. Do you think just adding more flour would do the trick for cut outs with impressed details? A jelly roll pan full of cookies is a LOT so maybe I could divide it in half and just add more flour to one half.

How much added flour? Thanks.

Shortbread Cookies

1 pound butter (4 sticks), half or 1 quarter salted, the rest unsalted, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

5 cups unbleached flour

Heat oven to 325 F. Cream butter and 1 cup sugar in a large mixer bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually add flour. Knead mixture by hand for about 10 minutes. (I just knuckle it about a bit until it’s doughy, rather than pasty). Press dough evenly into a 10x15 in jelly roll pan. Cut partially through into squares and pierce each piece with a fork. Bake until crisp and golden (about 45-60 min). When done, cut again and sprinkle with sugar.

Linnea, it doesn't look like you'd need more flour to me.

For another comparison, this is the shortbread recipe I use (easy to double). I use salted butter for this. Just a taste preference with shortbread. As with your recipe, you can press this into a pan vs rolling out for cookies. In that case, you wouldn't need to chill it. This version didn't originally include the vanilla, but it's another taste preference for me.

Shortbread

Note: I use small cookie cutters for this, about 1 1/2"

2 cups flour
2 T. cornstarch
Pinch salt
1/2 cup plus 2 T. powdered sugar
2 sticks salted butter, room temp.
1/2 tsp. vanilla

First, remove 2 T. from the 2 cups of flour and replace with the 2 T. cornstarch. Add salt and whisk together. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Form into disk and wrap in plastic. Chill for about 30 minutes to an hour. Preheat oven to 325. Roll dough out on lightly floured surface to about 1/4-inch thickness. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters, adding a little more flour if needed. Place on parchment lined cookie sheet and bake about 20 to 25 minutes. Watch carefully, you want them to just barely get color (depending on your oven, you may need a little less or more time). Remove from oven, sprinkle with fine or granulated sugar, let sit for about 10 minutes, and remove to rack to cool.

Sorry...just thinking about this recipe from Ina G, although I use it more for tart crusts.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/shortbread-cookies-recipe-1945855

Also, this is one of the recipes that came with my cookie molds. Just ignore the mold part and roll out for cutting or pressing into your pan.

Classic Shortbread

A beautiful, buttery shortbread cookie recipe. This classic recipe is where it all begins. With only a few simple ingredients and one of our shortbread pans you can make a wonderful delicious treat.

1/2 cup butter at room temperature
1/3 cup powdered sugar (unsifted)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour (unsifted)

Using the back of a large spoon, cream the butter until it is light. Cream in the powered sugar, then the vanilla. Now work in the flour. Knead the dough on an unfloured board until nice and smooth. Spray the shortbread pan very lightly with a non-stick vegetable oil spray. Put the ball of dough in the middle of the pan, and working out from the center, firmly press the dough into the pan. Prick the entire surface with a fork, and bake the shortbread right in the pan at 325 degrees for about 30-35 minutes, or until it is lightly browned. Be sure that the middle is thoroughly cooked and doesn’t look slightly opaque or the shortbread might stick in the pan.

Let the shortbread cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before you loosen the edges with a knife and flip the pan over onto a wood cutting board. If the shortbread does not come right out, hold the pan upside down over the cutting board and firmly tap one edge of the pan against the board. This should loosen the shortbread and it should drop out. Cut the shortbread into serving pieces while it is still warm.

Let the pan cool before washing it in the sink or dishwasher.

From what I can see, my recipe primarily differs from most of these by having proportionately more flour.

The other difference I see are that some use powdered sugar, versus granulated in mine.

From the food science perspective, why powdered sugar?

Also, why do some use a small amount of cornstarch? I’ve never had a cookie recipe that called for it.

I borrowed a food science baking book from the library last year, that people on this forum had mentioned. I couldn't understand half of it! Even though my background is in science.

Was it Shirley Corriher's book by any chance? I bet you understood a lot more than I would! My love of baking is deep, but the science, not so much. :-/

Linnea, Everybody always has a different idea and a different recipe. I'm sure your own recipe would work great for the chill a log and slice method, or rolled without flour Chloebud's way (you can also use parchment). It's exactly like mine but for the extra cup of flour and specificity on salt. The salt is to taste. The extra cup of flour makes up for not adding any while rolling, but it will also make it crumblier, and I know you were concerned about that.

I can't tell you how many thousands of cut cookies with decorative stamped lines I've made in my life with the one cup less flour, rolled out recipe. Your cutters sound like they're similar to our old Hanukkah cutters. I promise it'll work with bleached all purpose flour (we always use Gold Medal), plain granulated cane sugar (we use C&H) and any kind of butter or baking sticks (margarine must have 100 Calories per TBSP to bake correctly). I'm sure it'll work with other ingredients, but I can guarantee those...

The cutters DID turn out to be too shallow. With the depth they cut, the cookies were too thin and very hard to pry out of the cutters. After rolling out and chilling 3 circles of dough, I ended up just making balls of dough and hand pressing them into the least detailed and most round shape, the pumpkins. I could make them thicker and was able to pull each one out. So the cute cat cutters did not even get used.

Though the cookies did not puff (having no leavening agent) the details flattened out during baking and were very hard to see. They are pumpkins if someone were to point that out. ;)

After a few hours of this, I took the rest of the dough and just marked it like a pie in segments and baked it.

Oh, no!! I'm so sorry! They really do work for me, but maybe it's all the experience from childhood on. The only thing I can think of is more flour on the cutters and less on the dough.. We did have to be very careful with the lion rampant--standing with raised paw--because getting the cookie out without losing the legs was hard (I say "was" because the cutter was stolen), and he had a lot of the stamped detail lines, but the other ones were okay.

Did your granddaughter at least have fun?

I had some cookie stamps years ago and I had the same problem. I thought it was just me. I had used my standard rolled sugar cookie dough recipe. So sorry after everything you went through. But did she enjoy her cookie anyway?

Well, darn! plllog has a good point about maybe more flour on the cutters. I can relate to "losing the legs." Not rolling the dough too thin and using the "right" cookie cutters can also help...although "right" is really just preference. I've not used cookie stamps as often as cookie cutters and the shortbread molds I mentioned. However, the molds are really much the same as stamps. I do have some molds where you bake the dough right in the mold. The cookies pop out easily due to all the butter. Other molds, like the pumpkin one I posted, instruct you to remove the imprinted dough before baking.

Regarding cookie cutters, I love the copper ones I've collected over time. If you don't feel like dealing with royal icing and decorating, I can guarantee your granddaughter will still love the kitty-shaped cookie. Maybe just tie a bow around the neck with Halloween ribbon.

Chloebud, that's a great cat!

I love that cat too! I think from now on I'll just have to look for open cutters.

My own thread is starting to give me an idea. I take pottery classes for fun. I'm thinking of making some kind of shortbread mold to use myself.

Linnea, the open cutters make it easy to pop the dough out. That would be great to make your own cookie molds!

Linnea, that's a terrific idea!

You could also practice a little more with the stamps, if you're making shortbread anyway, or rolling out some other kind of cookie.. Your description of yours sound very similar to the ones I grew up with. Thinking more about it, I think they were temperamental, but I just got good at it, and any failures just got rerolled with the scraps.

I recently made icebox cookies (the kind where you form the dough into logs and refrigerate before slicing and cooking). The recipe called for powdered sugar but I'd run out so I made them with granulated sugar. A few days later, I made a batch with powdered sugar. I couldn't tell the difference in the final product though perhaps there was some subtle difference that would have been noticeable with the two batches side by side.

I found this in a Fine Cooking article on the effect of granulated sugar on cookies:
"It also encourages spreading as the sugar melts. The proportion of sugar in most cookie dough recipes is so high that only about half of the sugar dissolves during mixing. During baking more of the sugar dissolves, which causes the dough to soften and spread."

https://www.finecooking.com/article/the-science-of-baking-cookies-2

So it sounds like powdered sugar would be preferable when you want to retain the impression.

Plllog - I think I have that same lion rampant cookie cutter in our Hanukah cookie cutter set.

Can anyone tell me what size to make a shortbread mold? I've never had one before. I won't get to it til I resume classes in January. Would probably have to make 2 since the dough is baked in it.

They are unglazed clay, right? That would show whatever carvings I make in it best.

Wah! Cloud Swift, guard it! Never let them leave your house! Check that you have them before strangers leave! Our babysitter borrowed them and one of her sorority sisters stole both the lion and the candle. (!! NOT a sisterly thing to do!) While other candle cookie cutters aren't as beautiful, they get the job done. The lion is irreplaceable. I look on eBay periodically, but nothing.