Baking – How to get cheap cookie cutters

This looks to me like the symptoms of too much flour - probably way too much.

Measuring baking ingredients by volume instead of weight is always a crapshoot, although it shouldn't be that far off - my guess is that either the flour was heavily compacted, or perhaps the baker's mind wandered off and she accidentally added an extra cup.

Overmixing (i.e. by using an electric mixer) is a common problem with cookies but the symptom of that is a hard and gritty cookie that doesn't rise - not one that rises too much and has unbaked flour in the center. As far as I know, that can only happen with a huge amount of flour. Obviously, too much flour would also result in a much denser dough.

What you ended up with seems to be more like a quickbread - almost a scone - and there is indeed not an awful lot of difference between the two aside from the ratios and the creaming of butter.

Excess flour probably wouldn't result in a stickier dough, but stickiness is more due to temperature than anything else. If you're finding the dough too sticky to mold then make sure it's thoroughly chilled - that will make it easier to work with.

A couple of things will lead to less spreading:

Shortening instead of butter - butter contains up to 20% water. When it reaches 212F/100C, it turns to steam, expands, and causes things to rise/puff. Also, shortening, as a more processed/refined fat, has a more even melting point, which would cause it to spread less. If you want the flavor of butter, consider butter-flavored shortening. If you must use butter, use clarified butter instead, as it has most of the moisture removed.

Refrigerate the dough -- the fat will melt later, causing less spreading by the time the starches and proteins set.

Egg whites -- stiffens a dough.

White vs. brown sugar - brown sugar contains more moisture than refined white sugar.