Saturday, November 29, 2008

Thumbs Up!

In the last comment my mom posted on my blog she mentioned Martha Stewart and it got me to thinking, "What is ol' Martha up to for the Holidays?" Her website always has the best holiday decorating ideas. So I wandered on over and found a feature on Christmas cookies. These precious thumbprints were one of the highlighted recipes. We have friends coming over for dinner tonight and they both have a very demanding sweet tooth. I knew this would be the perfect dessert with a tall glass of milk.

Chocolate Thumbprints
Martha Stewart Cookies

Ingredients

Makes 2 dozen

  • 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
  • 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons light corn syrup
Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together 1 stick butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla on medium-high speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Beat in flour, beginning on low speed and increasing to medium high.

Roll dough by teaspoonfuls into balls, and place 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven, and press thumb into tops of cookies to make indentations. (I used a wine cork to save my finger from trauma and to have a more uniform indentation.)
Return to oven, and bake until light brown on the edges, 7 to 9 minutes more. Remove to a wire rack to cool. Combine chocolate, 4 tablespoons butter, and corn syrup in a small heat-proof bowl.

Set over a pot of simmering water; stir occasionally until melted and smooth.

Allow to cool slightly. When cookies are cool, fill the thumbprints with the chocolate mixture.

These cookies were fun to make. Their petite size and popular flavor combination would make them the most amazing Christmas Cookie to package up and give a s a gift or bring to a holiday party. They don't require many ingredients so they aren't very costly to make. My mother in law told me that Hershey's is now making Sugar Free Chocolate Chips (she found them at Wal-Mart, but I haven't been able to find them yet in the supermarket), so you could even make these as a gift for people with special dietary needs.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

To die for! I want to make them right now! Too bad I have to make a football cake instead :(

Jessica

Anonymous said...

Those look great. I just flipped through that Martha mag. and those seemed very appealing. Nice idea on the wine cork!

Stacey

Anonymous said...

Those look sinfully delicious. They sure turned out pretty too. At first I couldn't figure out how you got the chocolate in the middle and especially to look perfectly molded. It never would have occured to me to melt the chocolate. Duh! I've passed this recipe onto my DH as well. (hee-hee)

What's Cookin Chicago said...

I love the tip of using a wine cork! They look delicious :)

Ingrid_3Bs said...

Those look yummy. Great idea to use a wine cork!
~ingrid

Anonymous said...

B...we used to DESTROY these things from Randazzo's as kids, along with those little jelly filled sun flower looking things. Awesome!

Tim (Ricky)

Anonymous said...

These looked amazing so we made them. They look like yours do but they have no taste! And the chocolate turned was too bitter.

Elizabeth said...

Sorry to hear that Samantha :-(

Stephanie said...

I just made these and blogged them- yum! Thanks!

AnickH said...

How nice, a chocolate centered cookie recipe that doesnt call for peanut butter! Not that pb is gross or anything, just nice to have a diversion for once! the texture of these look good btw