These two embossed rolling pins, Spring Flowers & Butterflies, and Ladybugs & Daisies, are two of my *absolute favorites* I’ve designed. They are a joy to bake with. The patterns roll out and bake up fabulously clean. Painting them with edible luster dust makes a truly superb presentation! Plain or painted, I love the happy, whimsical appearance of these cookies!

The sandwich filling is a super thick, decadent lemon buttercream infused with pulverized free-dried raspberries. The combination is pure heaven!

This is a fun recipe for you to make Spring & Summer cookies for Mother’s Day, 4th of July, or any summer celebration! The cookie recipe is easy and has full instructions, plus a FUN painting tutorial if you want to go for the colorful look. It’s like a coloring book, but on cookies! Make big cookies with no filling or little sandwich cookies. Do it your way!

These are simple vanilla-honey rolled cookies, delicious all on their own, but when sandwiched with the raspberry-lemon buttercream, wow, they become spectacular! Pour a big glass of raspberry lemonade to pair with these goodies if you go for the sandwich option.

The two pins I used:

Our website has all of our 200+ disk shapes, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, baking accessories plus more about our Women/Family Owned company in beautiful Colorado Springs! Ordering HERE helps us the most and we appreciate it! 🙏impressbakeware.com

All products are on our Etsy shop.

Our Amazon shop has our cookie press and disks and embossed rolling pins.

Let’s Bake!

Impress! Vanilla-Honey Rolled Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks, or 4 half sticks) butter, softened (not melted)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter until it is creamier and lighter in color. Add the sugar and cream together very well, until it is light and fluffy. Add the honey, then the vanilla, then the egg, mixing thoroughly after each addition.

Add the flour mixture slowly, mixing on a slow speed until a workable dough forms. Make sure all of the flour is incorporated evenly. If needed, knead it a bit by hand to make sure it is uniformly smooth and mixed. Depending on your mixer, this dough can seem crumbly at first but it kneads together well. Perfect rolling dough has a clay-like, workable texture that is not too sticky or too stiff. If it feels difficult to knead, it is probably too stiff. Add a little water or vanilla extract a teaspoon at a time until you achieve a workable texture. If it is too easy to knead or is sticking to your fingers, it is probably too soft. Add flour a tablespoon at a time until it is workable like clay.

Divide your dough into balls a little bigger than your fist. Work with one portion at a time to keep it manageable. Cover the unused portion to keep it from drying out.

NOTE: Remember that if you are doing sandwich cookies, you want to roll out part of your dough embossed for top cookies, and half plain and flat for bottom cookies. If you are sandwiching a full recipe, you will need about 22 plain bottom cookies and 22 patterned top cookies for 44 sandwiches.

Roll it out!

I usually recommend that you oil your regular pin with canola (or similar) oil before rolling, but I am starting to prefer using waxed paper. Start by creating a log of dough that’s about the width that you want, then flatten it out with your hands a bit. Put the waxed paper on top and roll the dough flat to 1/4″ thick. OR lightly oil your pin and roll as follows:

If using an oiled pin instead of waxed paper, place a bench scraper or similar item at the far end of the dough to prevent it from pulling up as you roll.  See pictures below with embossed pin. Use a regular rolling pin (preferably one with thickness spacer rings to make a perfect thickness) to roll your dough on to a silicone baking mat, glass cooktop, or lightly floured surface. Roll to a 1/4” thickness, and wide enough to accommodate the designed pin. Create a long rectangular slab of dough. The patterns on the embossed pins are designed to repeat, so you will be rolling a long rectangle of patterned dough.

Oil your embossed pin with canola (or similar) oil before rolling. Make sure to get it down into ALL of the engraved areas. You can use a pastry brush but it’s best to do it with your fingers, gently squeezing the pin with your hands to get oil into the shapes, and rubbing the surface to coat. Wipe off any excess with a paper towel, making sure nothing is left pooled in the larger cuts. We want a non-stick pin not a swimming pool! **If you’re new or this is confusing PLEASE watch the quick video clip below to see exactly what I mean!**

NOTE for these particular pins: Really focus on getting any super tight spaces, like the more intricate flowers, oiled up! If dough sticks anywhere, that’s the logical spot. So let the oil pool a little in any tighter shapes and your rolling should go smoothly!

Place a bench scraper or similar item at the far end of the dough to prevent it from pulling up as you roll. Now roll with your embossed pin, pressing down with a steady pressure that leaves a deep impression in the dough. The designs should be as raised up on the dough as deep as they are in the pin. If the pattern is not deep enough it will disappear as the cookies bake and puff. As this dough is not cold or stiff, you do not have to press terribly hard! Just an even pressure.

Here’s how it should look when rolled. Nice deep patterns!

Here’s a quick video clip of me oiling and rolling dough with my Fall Leaves Large Designs pin. Different pin, but same method!

Once rolled, use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Remove any excess dough around the edges. Keep your spatula/lifter flat, dust the end with a little flour, and lift the shapes, beginning by lifting one edge slightly first, then sliding the spatula/scraper under the whole shape. Transfer them to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing them at least an inch apart. Remember to roll out plain bottom cookies if you’re doing sandwich cookies! The rolling pin with thickness rings, bench/dough scraper and cookie cutters I’m using here are available at our website and Etsy shops.

Bake at 400°F for 6-10 minutes, checking at 6 minutes and every minute after as cookies brown quickly. They are done when the edges are slightly brown. Cookies harden significantly the longer they bake, so bake just a few cookies first to test timing for desired doneness and hardness.

Move to a cooling rack after 5 minutes.

Painting

If you’re painting, do it now before sandwiching, I know this looks like it must be complicated, but it’s really quite simple. If you are leaving cookies plain, either move on to sandwiching or you’re done!

Luster dust is what makes this beautiful presentation possible. I use it so often in my cookie press posts that in 2022 we started selling it on our website and Etsy shop! We chose to partner with an American company, Bakell, that makes dusts here in the USA. They make gorgeous dusts that are silky, vibrant, and a joy to work with. Their 4 gram jars last and last. A little goes a long way!

To get the look I show you’re going to paint with edible luster dust mixed with clear alcohol. You could alternatively use any clear extract. Vodka is definitely the best choice and makes the smoothest, fastest-drying paint! The taste disappears. As you experiment, you’ll get the hang of mixing dust and liquid. We also sell a wonderful decorating brush set.

My technique (you may come up with a better one) is to put a small amount of vodka in a little dish or cup, then use a larger brush (always use food safe brushes) to drip the liquid a little at a time next to your piles of dust. I use a big plate and place small dust piles around it, then add extract a little at a time- it doesn’t take much! It also dries out quickly so you’ll find yourself adding more. I save that big brush and keep it clean so I’m always re-dipping it in a clean liquid.

NOTE: Always make sure you are using EDIBLE dusts! Some luster/pearl/glitter dusts on the market are “non-toxic” but that does not mean they are edible. Plenty of brands have actual food ingredients and are marked “edible”. ONLY use those for safety’s sake!

Start adding vodka to the dust and swirl it around until it forms a paint. Not too thick, not too runny or transparent. You want the color to show up but not be gloppy. So start painting and experiment! It takes a little practice to not get it too heavy or too light. Be patient and take a few minutes to see how runny or thick your “paint” needs to be. If you want a more opaque or pastel color, add a little white dust.

I didn’t do anything particularly fancy or surprising with these cookies. I followed the raised patterns on the cookies themselves and treated them like a coloring book. It’s easy to keep the paint on the patterns because the designs sit high enough above the cookie surface.

I often paint with one color at a time, like the cookie above sitting on the table. Do all the green leaves on a bunch of cookies, then all the white flowers, etc. It seems faster to work one color at a time over multiple cookies.

Remember to let colors dry before adding a new color that touches so they don’t bleed together. Experiment and get creative! If you’d like a video showing how to paint (with brushes or your fingers!), I put one from 2023’s Gingerbread recipe at the bottom of this post. 😀

Sandwiches!

The sandwich filling is a buttercream so thick you can roll it out and play with it like play dough! Try not to eat it all before the sandwiches are done. 

Super Thick Raspberry-Lemon Buttercream

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
3 & 3/4 cups powdered sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1/4 cup pulverized freeze-dried raspberries

Using a blender, food processor or a little Magic Bullet type device, pulverize freeze-dried raspberries until you have 1/4 cup. I used a little over half of a 1.25 oz bag.

Quick note: I know people love and prefer to use lemon juice in buttercream, but this recipe is THICK and cannot handle the amount of juice it would require to get it truly lemony. Just a half teaspoon of extract was perfect and blended beautifully with the raspberry flavor. You’re going to LOVE this one!

Cream the butter with an electric mixer, then add the heavy cream and lemon extract and mix thoroughly. Add powdered sugar a little at a time. Add in the freeze dried raspberries to the thick buttercream at the end. Do not be alarmed or surprised! This mixture can be very dry and crumbly, so if needed, finish kneading by hand until a smooth clay-like dough forms. It will be stiffer than the cookie dough. Keep kneading even if it seems very stiff, until it forms a workable ball as pictured. It will warm and soften as you work it. Add cream to an overly stiff mixture, or powdered sugar to a soft sticky mixture, as needed to get a workable clay-like consistency. It will be fun to knead, though still stiff, when it’s the right texture.

Roll it out the same way you rolled the cookie dough, on a clean silicone mat or surface, preferably with a spacing pin. You can use the waxed paper technique I showed with the cookie dough on this buttercream filling.

I always use the same 1/4″ thickness spacing on my sandwich cookie fillings as I do for cookies. They’re crazy thick but oh so delicious. Use the same cookie cutter as you did for your cookies so it all matches up size-wise.

Lift them the same way you would lift cookie dough, getting under one edge first with your spatula/lifter. If needed you can use powdered sugar to keep your lifter non-stick the same way you use flour with cookie dough. As you go to put the filling on the cookie, wet the surface of the buttercream slightly with a fingertip and it will stick to the cookies. I keep a small cup of warm water there as I work.

Here’s some plain and painted sandwiches. And that’s it!

Happy Mother’s Day and may you all have a sweet and happy Spring and Summer.

As always, Happy Baking!

~Susie

Disk & Pin Designer/Co-Owner at Impress! Bakeware, LLC

Our website has all of our 200+ disk shapes, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, luster dusts, baking accessories plus more about our Women/Family Owned company! impressbakeware.com

All products are on our Etsy shop.

Our Amazon shop has our cookie press and disks and embossed rolling pins.

Follow us on facebook! 

Here’s the Gingerbread painting video!

If you’re not familiar with rolling pins with thickness rings, here’s ours: