It’s holiday baking season and I am here to help with some of my best cookie recipes. This cookie came about because I wanted to showcase (read: get rid of) some of the beautiful jams that I put up this year with fruit from my beloved Oak Park farmers’ market. There is no better way to get a sense of who I am as a cook that to try some of my Black Raspberry Mint or Blackberry Sage Jam made with fruit from local — if local includes Michigan — farms.
The classic jam cookie is the jam thumbprint. But a food blogger can’t make just any old jam thumbprint cookie. I trick out my jam thumbprints with a healthy dose of lemon zest and freshly squeezed lemon juice. The lemon flavor pairs especially well with the berry jams I use. The result is a very grown-up cookie indeed.
If you don’t make jam yourself, you can absolutely still make these cookies. Just use the very best jam you can find. We all have a fancy jar of jam sitting in a cupboard or the back of the fridge from some long-forgotten house present or hostess gift. Dig out that neglected jar and give it a new life in some cookies!
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 egg yolks at room temperature
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 TB each lemon zest and freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- Pinch salt
- 8 oz. jam, such as blackberry or raspberry, preferably homemade
- Mix together dry ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.
- Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add egg yolks one at a time.
- Add vanilla extract, lemon juice and lemon zest and combine.
- Gradually add dry ingredients and mix until dough comes together.
- Gather dough into a ball and chill for at least four hours or overnight.
- To bake the cookies, preheat oven to 375.
- Shape small pieces of dough into balls approximately 1” around and place on lined cookie sheet, approximately 1” apart.
- Make a small indentation in each cookie with your thumb.
- Using a small spoon, fill the indentation with jam.
- Bake 20 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown.
- Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.
[…] in jam? Make thumbprint cookies for your holiday cookie […]