These Brown Butter Cookies are a gourmet twist on sugar cookies. They have a deep, rich, caramelized taste, and are decorated with white and dark modeling chocolate. The embossing gives them an added elegance, sort of like a cookie in a tuxedo.

These Brown Butter Cookies were a gift to a good friend who was getting married after being widowed for several years. I’ve given her many cookies over the years, but this time I wanted something for her to share with her new beau. The heart shape was perfect and covering them with white chocolate for the bride and dark chocolate for the groom seemed like the perfect match for this sweet couple.

“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart.” Judy Garland

Patriotic shoes? Why not?! A dear friend was giving a talk about the history of shoes to her women’s group and asked me to make three dozen shoe cookies. The colors she wanted were red, white, and blue — to tie in with Independence Day. She even provided the shoe cookie cutter. I don’t know why, but I’d never done 4th-of-July cutout cookies, so I jumped at the opportunity to try something new.