TWD - Thumbprints for Us Big Guys

Another week, another Tuesday with Dorie recipe. This week, our host is Mike of Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude. Last week, we learned he was a dwarf warrior called Thaddeus from Dungeons and Dragons. This week, we are told to expect a glorious fanfare because it is his TWD pick. And what a good pick it is - Thumbprints for Us Big Guys.

Thumbprints is a US term for these cookies. In Australia, the closest that we have is jam drops, with the same concept, but using a shortbread-style biscuit to drop the jam in, and usually, the jam is put into the cavity before you bake the biscuits. I often got into trouble as a child by being very generous with the jam (the job allocated to me in the jam drop making process), causing it to run over the top of the biscuits and out into the tray.

These particular thumbprints are made with ground hazelnuts - I ground my own, husk and all, hence the flecks in my biscuits. While baking these, I had to remake the "thumbprints", because they tended to disappear as the biscuits rose and spread. These biscuits are very buttery - so buttery that they are a little fragile once fully cooled.

The biscuits are allowed to cool completely before you put the jam in. This makes the biscuits look neater than the jam drops to which I am accustomed. I used dragonberry jam for my thumbprints, made from dragonfruit.

These biscuits were easy enough to make and fuss free - no chilling of dough, just mix and go. They also tasted very nice - melt in the mouth cookies with that sweet spot of jam in the middle.

Thanks to our host, Mike, for this pick. You can check out the recipe on his site. You can also check out the other TWD thumbprint variations by visiting the TWD blogroll.

To close out this post, I am going to show off my two latest cross stitch projects - baby album covers for two friends:




I actually made these over Christmas when I had plenty of time on my hands, as in the hurly burly of every day life, I don't get the time to do projects like this. The stitching has a purple hue, because I didn't know whether the babies would be girls or boys when I made these; as it happens, they are both boys.