torley manor

Gotta love ‘em. Most versatile cookies ever. This recipe is from a really great super snobby food blog called Baking Bites that I read occasionally. It’s probably the best thumbprint cookie I’ve made OR eaten. It’s got just the right texture, which is (surprisingly) accomplished with cornstarch. They’re pretty impressive cookies, whatever way you go about them.

Ways to go about thumbprints:

1. As per the original recipe, fill the unbaked cookies with jam/fruit curd and bake.
2. Bake unfilled cookies and carefully fill the wells up to the brim with a thin frosting that will harden on top and stay gooey inside. This is especially good if you zest a lemon into the cookie dough, and put a bit of lemon juice into the frosting. Very grownup cookie. I’ll show you some of these eventually. The trick to that frosting is a bit of corn syrup. You’ll laugh but I got the recipe on the back of a dollar package of Christmas cookie cutters I got at the Bloomfield Foodland …. which featured Santa and a six pointed star. Amazing.
3. Bake unfilled cookies and show off your fancy frosting tips while you pipe in some buttercream frosting. I went for chocolate this time, but have done orange frosting, and vanilla too, and I don’t think there’s really any way to go wrong here.

Chocolate buttercream frosting piped onto vanilla thumbprint cookies.

Raising a cookie army. I quadrupled the recipe. This picture is not all of the cookies!

Proud mama with her million cookie babies. Q says “Look at those cute fuckers!” and I agree.