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Thumbprint cookies have been around for a very long time. I remember my grandmother making them when I was a child. She really did make depressions in her cookies with her thumbs. She then filled them with homemade raspberry or strawberry jam.
We still make thumbprint cookies and love them—both because they are very good and because they are attractive. Many of your favorite cookie recipes can be converted to thumbprint cookies.
Take a plain cookie and make it a fancy and festive thumbprint cookie with a filling. Choose your flavors and fillings. Drizzle them with a little chocolate. You’ll be surprised at how many variations you can make.
Start with a plain cookie:
Choose a cookie mix or recipe with a higher profile to accommodate a thumbprint. A cakey applesauce cookie or oatmeal cookie will work. We love quick and easy coconut macaroon mixes in both vanilla and chocolate for wonderful thumbprint cookies.
Choose a filling:
Here’s where it gets fun. Look at all the fillings you can choose: white or dark chocolate, jams and jellies, pastry fillings, or maraschino cherries. Mix the cookie dough according to directions and place mounds on the cookie sheet. Traditionally, depressions are pressed in the dough with a thumb but we like nice round depressions. For 2-inch cookies, we use the round handle of a whisk to press 3/4-inch holes part way through the cookies. The holes are deep enough to accommodate about a teaspoon of filling but not pressed all the way through the cookies. (The batter tends to stick to the whisk handle but a quick swish in water after every third cookie solves that.) Add the filling before baking. Two chocolate wafers are perfect for chocolate centers in 2-inch cookies. Try three for larger cookies.
Choose a flavor:
It’s not necessary but we like to match a flavor or extract to the filling. With a cherry filling, consider a cherry flavor or amaretto flavor in the dough. Add a raspberry flavor to the dough with a raspberry filling and a blueberry flavor with a blueberry filling.
Dress them up:
For a more formal cookie, drizzle a little melted white chocolate or dark chocolate across the cookies. You may also make an icing to drizzle across the cookies. Adding two tablespoons of meringue powder to the frosting will make the frosting set harder so that the frosting will be less likely to mar when storing or shipping.
Selected recipes and mixes:
Notes from the Test Kitchen
Coconut Macaroon Thumbprints
We made batch after batch of coconut macaroon thumbprint cookies and served them to customers in our store.
We started with vanilla coconut macaroons and added chocolate wafers. Two wafers per cookie were perfect. Add them before you bake and you’ll have a pool of melted chocolate atop each cookie.
We then made a batch with maraschino cherries. A large cherry was too much for our two-inch macaroons. A jar of smaller cherries was perfect—or cut larger ones in half.
For a later batch of coconut macaroons with maraschino cherries, we added a teaspoon of amaretto flavor for a very nice touch. One teaspoon of flavor for 30 cookies was just right.
We made chocolate coconut macaroons. We put white chocolate wafers in part and dark chocolate wafers in the rest. The customers seemed to prefer the white chocolate but we thought both were very good.
We made cookies with pastry fillings — the same fillings that bake shops use to make filled pastries and donuts. Before baking we made depressions in the cookies and filled them with cherry, raspberry, blueberry, and lemon fillings.
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