Lavender Strawberry Thumbprints
I’m knee deep in cookie baking right now. As I’m typing this, I have all my cookie doughs done and in the fridge and my next project is candy truffle fillings. Then it’s just baking, dipping, sprinkling, and I’m done. My cookie list is a bit long. I have the usual suspects….gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies, and thumbprints. I have a pistachio butter cookie from Martha’s Baking Book. And there’s the palmiers, chocolate wafers, and Italian cookies because duh….Christmas without Italian cookies would be sad. And the quest for the perfect Italian bakery cookie recipe continues. But that’s another post.
Anyway, I scored some culinary lavender on Amazon without realizing just how much lavender I was getting. Whoopsie! I pondered doing a sugar cookie, but I already have one. Shortbread? Boring! I contemplated doing a chocolate chip cookie and just adding some lavender, but I didn’t want to use up my chocolate on cookies when I need it for candy. The last thing I want to do right now is battle the crowds for a few bags of chocolate chips. No thanks. Perhaps another time. I mean, I have enough lavender to make around ten thousand batches of cookies.
I was going to skip doing thumbprints this year. They’re kind of tedious. And I’ve done them every year. For years. Sick of them. This year my list included a cheesecake thumbprint, which was how I going to get around my thumbprint doldrums. But that lavender! And it it was the last dough on my list to make, so I hadn’t made it yet. Then I realized that I had actually forgotten to get the dang cream cheese.
And that was it. It was like the heavenly oven of baking epiphanies opened and a beam of sunlight shone upon me standing there in the kitchen in my pajamas, surrounded by flour spills and butter laiden countertops, staring at this giant bag of lavender. Ok, that was a bit dramatic. But I was in my pajamas. And there might have been globs of cookie dough hanging from my unbrushed hair.
The tired, sad, unimaginative strawberry thumbprint got a magical facelift. Berries and lavender are quite fond of one another. I swapped out the vanilla for almond and with much glee added lavender buds to the dough. It’s kind of a nail biter. Too much lavender and the cookies will taste like soap. Not enough and the lavender will be just a mildly distracting note in the background that really makes no difference at all. And we all know what a terrible baker I am. What’s going to happen?!
Lavender Strawberry Thumbprints
Ingredients
- 1 lb butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 egg yolks
- 2 teaspoons almond extract
- 4 cups flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon dried lavender buds
- 1 1/2 cups strawberry jam
Instructions
- In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together the sugar and the butter until fluffy on medium high speed. Add the almond extract and the egg yolks. Add the salt, lower the mixer speed to low, and incorporate the flour a cup at a time. Add the lavender. Wrap the dough in saran wrap and chill overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 350. Roll the dough into balls about the size of a large marble or fresh cherry and place about two inches apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Depress the centers, making a well. I used the end of a cheese knife, dipping it into flour for each cookie before making the indentation.
- Fill the cookies with jam and bake for about 12 to 15 minutes or until the edges just start to turn lightly golden. Cool on wire racks. And voila!