Thumbprints (Lemon-Raspberry)
Description
Thumbprints are everywhere and I have a stack of different versions that I wanted to try – Ina Garten’s and The New York Times to name a couple. They’re all pretty similar however so you can dress up these ones from King Arthur Flour any way you please. I chose this recipe simply because it was the most straight forward (and the fact that they were lemon was an added bonus) – enjoy!
Ingredients
1 c. butter, softened AND 1 c. sugar
1 T. lemon zest AND 1 t. vanilla AND 1/2 t. salt
1 egg
2 1/4 c. flour (you may need a little more)
1/2 c. raspberry jam or jelly
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 and line 1 or 2 baking sheets with parchment. Using your electric mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, zest, vanilla and salt for a few minutes until the mix is fluffy, then beat in the egg. Add the flour and mix on low until well blended, if the dough is too soft, add a bit more flour but do so in small increments. The original recipe called for 2 3/4 cups of flour, and every other recipe I researched called for varying amounts so if you need to, roll a little ball of dough to make sure it stays together. The balls should be quite firm without being too soft.
Weigh the dough to make yourself 20 gram cookie balls – at this size, you should get between 3 and 4 dozen cookies. Set the balls onto the baking sheet about 2 inches apart and make a small indent in the center – I found the end of my honey stick to be a good size. Bake for 12 minutes, remove them from the oven and re-press the indent, then leave the cookies on the baking sheet to set and firm up for about 5 minutes before removing them to a rack to cool completely. The cookies can be filled at any point with a 1/4 to a 1/2 teaspoon of jam, but only if they’re going to get eaten that day. These freeze really well, as long as they aren’t filled.
