Wisconsin Jam Thumbprint Cookies

Wisconsin strawberry jam thumbprint cookies

December is a time for many things: Family, friends and marathon baking.

And it's the cycle of marathon baking that we've been enduring during the past few weeks. We sat down during our Thanksgiving weekend and planned out our baking schedule, both what we were baking and when we were baking it.

For the past few years, Melissa and I have struck out on our own and baked. This year we tweaked the lineup of cookies we would bake.

One thing we wanted to do was incorporate our homemade Wisconsin jam from our first year of canning. 

Melissa found a Butter and Jam Thumbprint Cookies recipe on Food Network that we used and included our homemade Wisconsin strawberry and Wisconsin tart cherry jams.

We made several batches of each jam and, interestingly, we both thought the strawberry one was better. A waft of fresh strawberries hits you when you open up the cookie tin. For a moment, you're back squatting in between rows of freshly ripened strawberries, picking boxes full in the early morning June sun.

The tart cherry ones were disappointing, at a minimum. When you bite into one, you still get a rush of cherry, but it's lacking its tartness. It's unfortunate, really.

The best thing about this recipe? Finding the sweet spot where you push down just right on the thumbprint, keeping all the jam from overflowing during baking time. (The upside is you get a lot of "tester" cookies.)

Yeah, we'll take that.

Homemade Thin Mint Ice Cream

One thing I love about March is March Madness. Of course, that has nothing to do with a food blog.

The other thing I love about March is Girl Scout cookies. This is more in line with our topic.

When we ordered a bunch of cookies this winter, I wondered how we could use them as ingredients instead of just eating sleeve after sleeve after sleeve. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

And our favorite cookie is Thin Mint. Melissa adapted the vanilla bean ice cream and instead used 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract for the base. Then she smashed 1 sleeve of Thin Mints and mixed the two together. What we ended with was, in fact, lovely:

When we tasted it for the first time, it was delicious. But the tastings after that were much better. By that time (2 to 3 days after the ice cream was churned), the Thin Mint flavor had fully penetrated the base ice cream, giving it a much deeper and consistent flavor.

This ice cream is gone now, but, hey, we do have several sleeves of Thin Mint cookies left. :)

Reese's Pieces Cookies

Our local grocery store has sold Reese's Pieces cookies that we have been addicted to for years, but they're over-priced and probably use ingredients I'd prefer not to ingest. Although cookies are obviously not the most healthy of items, I do prefer to have more control over what goes into my food.

So I decided to search out a recipe that would allow me to make these fantastic cookies at home. During that search I came across a fantastic basic cookie dough that can use any mix-ins at the Notes on a Recipe blog and, ever since making these for the first time, I haven't stopped making them. Mainly because they've been in demand by everyone who have tried them.


Basic Cookie Dough

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 1/4 cup AP flour (you could use half AP flour and half whole wheat pastry flour if you want to feel just a little better about eating cookies)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar with a mixer till fluffy.
Add egg and vanilla extract and mix well.
In another bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking soda.
Mix flour mixture into butter mixture.
Add 1 cup chocolate chips, crumbled toffee, M&Ms or whatever else you want.
Bake 10 to 12 minutes.

Snickerdoodles

Around December, both Pinch My Salt and VeganYumYum posted recipes for snickerdoodles. That made me crave them. However, we didn't make any because we were already busy with our large slate of Christmas cookies.

Since neither Melissa nor I have tried baking snickerdoodles, we searched for a recipe we would both want to try and came up with one from Cooking Light.

Snickerdoodles
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
cooking spray

After preheating oven to 400 degrees, combine the 3/4 cup sugar, brown sugar and butter in medium bowl. Beat with a mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and egg.

Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup and level. Combine flour, baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and salt. Whisk well. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and beat until just combined. Shape dough into balls.

Combine 1/3 cup sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon in a small dish. Roll balls in mixture and place 2 inches apart on baking sheets coated with cooking spray.


Bake for about 8 minutes or until tops crack. Cook for 1 minute on pans and then move to cooling rack.




So far our cookies have come out with great taste, but have been baked a bit too long, leaving the cookie on the far end of crunchy. I like them balanced well between chewy and crunchy, so we'll have to keep trying until we get it right, which means a lot of snickerdoodle cookies are in our future.

Poor us.