Food Lust People Love: sprinkles

Monday, November 11, 2013

Chocolate-Filled Christmas Thumbprint Cookies

These pretty little chocolate-filled Christmas thumbprint cookies are a mouthful of wonderful on a Christmas plate. Roll the dough into balls and coat them with sprinkles or colored coarse sugar, then bake and fill with melted chocolate when cool. Santa and his helpers will love these!

Chocolate-Filled Christmas Thumbprint Cookies

This recipe is adapted by one from Juanita’s Cocina. Many thanks to Jen for the inspiration to create this Christmas cookie. It was published originally as part of an organized group called Christmas Week. Scroll down to see the list of recipes from the other participants.

Ingredients for two dozen cookies
For the cookie:
1 cup or 225g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup or 125g powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups or 315g flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Red and green sugar or red and green sprinkles (I used about a 1/4 cup of each color, mixed together.)

For the filling:
3 1/2 oz or 100g semi sweet or dark chocolate – I prefer to use bars rather than chips because the chips don’t melt as nicely.

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Grease two cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper with just a dab of butter to keep the parchment from sliding around.

Put your sprinkles in a small bowl and set aside.

Sift your powdered sugar into a large mixing bowl. Add in the butter and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy. This takes just a few minutes.

Add in the salt and about a quarter of the flour and beat until smooth. Keep adding the flour a quarter at a time and mixing well, until you have soft dough.

Scoop out tablespoons of the dough and roll them into balls.

Roll them around one at a time in your bowl of red and green sprinkles, until they are fully coated. Place them on a cookie sheet with a couple of inches between them.

Press a small indentation in the top of each ball with your thumb or forefinger.

Bake the first pan for 10 minutes in your preheated oven.

Remove the pan from the oven and use the end of a wooden spoon or a pastry brush to enlarge the indentation in the cookie.

Bake for another seven or eight minutes, then remove from the oven. You want them to be just set but not browned. I pushed the indentation down again, just gently. Allow the cookies to cool and repeat the process with the second pan of dough balls.

Leave the cookies to cool.

Meanwhile, melt your chocolate in a microwaveable bowl, by zapping it for 15 seconds at a time and stirring in between, until it is of pourable consistency.

When the cookies are completely cool, put your melted chocolate in a piping bag with a small decorating tip and fill each cookie indentation with chocolate.