Today two of my cast iron cookie molds arrived! One bakes heart shaped cookies, and the other does all the letters of the alphabet. This is of course terribly exciting! If I had tiny children I could teach them reading by using these letters. Each letter has a little picture inside; for example, the letter H has a heart inside, A has an apple, B has a bird - no doubt this is intended to further aid the cookie eating public to learn their letters. Much better than alphabet soup, don't you think?
Anyway, I decided to try them out immediately, and used them to make shortbread (I ran out recently), though no doubt they would be equally good with a gingerbread or sugar cookie mix, or even Springerles. I oiled the forms well, heated them up in the oven, and then pressed the cookie dough into the hot mold. One has to be careful not to burn oneself, obviously - perhaps heating up the forms isn't really necessary, and one could use a baking spray instead to make sure nothing got stuck.
I was quite lucky, although a few of the hearts stuck a little bit - things often get sticky in matters of the heart, don't you know - the alphabet cookies all came out rather well; the form has some sort of coating I think.
The cookies are very nice to eat, too!
