Don’t thumbprint cookies just make you feel like a kid again?! Pushing your thumb right through the center of a precise round ball of dough. Kind of like spending a day building sand castles at the beach. You step back to admire all of your hard work and in comes your brother runining it all with one STOMP on the top! Okay, I guess it was just karma for me knocking over all of his lincoln logs…
Putting a thumbprint in these cookies will probably only “ruin” your own work, unless you have a sous chef. But it makes way for so much other goodness in the center of the cookie – jam, lemon curd, chocolate – the possibilities are endless.
The story behind these cookies starts with the filling. We had a flood in our office a few weeks back and I have been going over to my boss’s house for meetings. (Not the show up in a suit boss, rather the fluffy pink crocs and a sweatshirt will do boss…) Last week when I was there, he gave me some of his family’s beach plum jam. He thought I, “being a kitchen guru”, could find a way to use it. And I pondered… (if I was on Iron Chef – I would be screwed!)
In doing a bit of tasting and research I found out beach plums are much like regular plums, but with the tartness of a cranberry. They grow along the sand dunes in coastal areas, hence the name. And I became ever so grateful for all of the feet that trudged through the poison ivy to get to the beach plums and the hands that picked and pitted the fruit in the jar. It truly was a jam in need of something fantastic to go with it.
I wanted the beach plum jam as the center spotlight. But a delicate cookie accenting the jam and allowing it to shine through. And I think I did with accents of lemon and ground almonds in Dorie Greenspan’s thumbprint cookie recipe. However, I should really let my boss be the judge – I returned his favor of the jam last week, for a batch of cookies this week. Maybe I am hoping my good karma pays off in the form of some more jam…
Lemon Almond Thumbprint Cookies
Adapted from Baking from my Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan
Makes about 60 cookies
- 1 3/4 cups finely ground almonds
- 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (you can use all-purpose instead)
- pinch of salt
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- zest of 1 medium lemon
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- juice of 1 medium lemon
- About 1 cup of beach plum jam (we tried it was strawberry and it was great too!)
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees farenheit. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
- Whisk together the almonds, flour and salt in a bowl separate from the one you will be using for mixing the dough.
- Add the lemon zest and sugar to the large mixing bowl and rub together between your fingertips. You want the sugar to be fragrant with the lemon. Add the butter and using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, blend together until the butter, sugar and zest are light and fluffy. This will take about 3 or 4 minutes.
- Add the vanilla and the lemon juice to the mixture and mix just until it is mixed in with the dough.
- Using about a teaspoon of dough at a time, about the size of a cherry tomato, roll the dough between your palms to form balls. Place the balls about two inches apart on the baking sheets. Gripping each cookie between your forefinger and thumb of one hand, press down on the center of the dough with the other thumb until a small well is formed. Do not go all the way down to the baking sheet.
- Bake for 14 to 18 minutes – you should rotate the sheets halfway through the baking time. The cookies will be only slightly colored – the bottoms will just be beginning to brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before placing on the cooling rack. If the indentations have risen during baking, using the end of a wooden spoon gently pat out the area needed for the jam.
- To fill the cookies, bring the jam just to a boil in a small saucepan over low heat. Fill with enough jam to come level to the top, or to your liking!
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