Hi, Patsy, this is a SUPER timely question, as our next Practice Bakes Perfect challenge will be all about making molded cookies. (It should post this weekend or early next week). But, I love to mold cookie dough in molds, as I too am not a huge fan of chunky pieces of fondant on cookies. I have several YouTube videos with molded or embossed cookie projects and an entire video about in- vs. out-of-mold baking (basically a Cookie Molding 101).
@Susan Moniz at Artesao Molds will be sponsoring the next challenge, and has also posted a number of molded cookies to this site (and sells some great molds), so I have tagged her here so she can supply any additional cookie-molding tips.
Here's a link to my molded cookie video (that discusses in- vs. out-of-mold baking, among other things): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebsZaa7pRSg
Also, for some examples, all of the flowers (except for the teeny pink ones) on these cookie projects of mine were molded with cookie dough (links to videos and some photos, below). So, as I think you'll see . . . you can get very crisp results even with cookie dough, if you use a non-spreading dough and bake within the mold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWjtOipq_3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebsZaa7pRSg
