Shortbread - made with love

One of my friends gave me a cook stamp for Christmas from Accessorise.

'Made with love'

There was a shortbread recipe on the back that it suggested you use it with so I thought I'd give it a go.  When I looked at the recipe though it seemed a little excessive, it used 500g of butter (equal flour) and suggested it made just 12 biscuits!  Didn't sound at all right to be and I remembered that Angela recently made shortbread over on her blog Garden, Tea, cakes and Me so I thought I would use her recipe instead.

I did make one change to the recipe, the one on the back of my stamp had vanilla essence included and I liked this idea so added a tea spoon.  Then rolled out the dough and stamped.

The stamp isn't a cutter so I cut around them with a similar sized cookie cutter.

Then sprinkled with sugar and baked.  I was really pleased with how the stamp looked on the dough, was really easy to use and looked very cute, unfortunately once they were baked they didn't really hold the stamp clearly, but they tasted delicious, thank you Angela!

I shall try the stamp again with a chilled dough and see if that makes any difference, anybody got any other tips for keeping the stamp clear after baking?