TWD: Thumbprints For Us Big Guys

I *heart* cookies that involve jam. I mean, I love them a whole lot. They might not equal a chocolate chip cookie for me, but they're firmly in second place. I think this might have something to do with my love of any jam or preserve (jellies not so much, and please keep grape jelly far, far away from me and my pb&j). I used to put strawberry jam on my pancakes and waffles in lieu of syrup, and I went through a major "biscuit with strawberry jam" breakfast phase in high school. But if you say strawberry jam I say thumbprint. Not just any thumbprint, mind you, the thumbprints that my mom makes for Christmas. Those might just be my favorite cookie, ever.

For as long as I can remember, thumbprints have been the ne plus ultra of Christmas cookies in my family. There are several varieties of cookies, but my dad, my brother, and yours truly all wait for the thumbprints (if you're interested, my sister swings for sugar cookies and my mom is on the Mexican wedding cake team). My brother has even been known to do a thumbprint variation of the Holy Eucharist, which is totally blasphemous but completely hilarious. When I was younger I could never, for the life of me, understand why we could only have these cookies at Christmastime. I mean, they're so great, so shouldn't we have them all year round? Or at least for Valentine's Day and the 4th of July? Well, my sophomore year in college I shared an apartment with two roommates(a total and complete roommate disaster, by the way, but that's another post, or several posts). This was the first time I'd ever had a kitchen of my own, and I could make anything I wanted (but the most successful thing to come out of that kitchen was jello shots, sad but true). And, you can bet that by late September, early October maybe, I'd covertly aquired that thumbprint recipe and I was going to make thumbprints before Christmas. So, I measured and mixed and rolled and baked and filled and you know what? They didn't taste right. My roommates and friends ate them, but no one experienced thumbprint nirvana. My mom was right (my mother is always right -- it's downright frightening at times) -- you can't eat thumbprints unless it's around Christmas. Actually, I think it might have something to do with mediocre ingredients, equipment, and skills, but we'll leave it that my mom was right, because that's how it settled in my mind. This is the first time since that first experiment that I've made thumbprints outside of the holiday season. It doesn't really count, though, because it's not my mom's recipe. 

That was a long segue into this little cookie for Big Guys (Manly Men, even?), wasn't it? The cookies are super simple to make. I used almonds rather than hazelnuts just because I love almonds and I'm *meh* on hazelnuts. Hazelnuts are best left in Nutella. I made 1/2 a recipe because my official TWD taste tester, that dastardly Dudley, gave up sweets for Lent, but even if he hadn't he doesn't like desserts with fruit in them. Yup, if it's a fruity dessert you can be pretty sure that I'm knocking on doors looking for takers. No matter, though, I happen to love fruit for and in my desserts (it's just nice to get a second opinion sometimes, right?). On to the jam. I had precious little strawberry jam in my house, no raspberry jam, and about 4 jars of jalapeno pepper jelly. I also had these two jars of jam left over from my kolache experiment last December. These jams are lovely and have great flavor, but they're really, as you might see on the label, fruit spreads. This means that there are giant hunks 'o fruit floating around in there. Giant hunks 'o fruit + thumbprints = not compatible at all, in my opinion. So, I stuck the requsite jam in the blender until the hunks 'o fruit were no more. Problem solved. 

So, of course these thumbprints weren't like my mom's thumbprints (her recipe doesn't have nut flour and calls for powdered sugar in the dough) but they're still very good. I loved the flavor of the almonds in these cookies, and I'm kind of tempted to experiment with pecans in the dough, too. I'm sure that someone this week did, so I'll have to be on the hunt for a pecan version of these goodies. Thanks to Mike of Ugly Food Dude for giving me the opportunity to a) make a recipe that I've been dying to try and b) make and eat thumbprints outside of the holiday season. Do check out his blog if you'd like the recipe, and it's hilarious. I was laughing pretty hard as I was reading his back posts.