Cranberry Orange Thumbprints
Cranberry Orange Thumbprints are the perfect Thanksgiving cookie (IMO). These are for all the people who want a sweet after dinner but don’t want all the pie. They are for the people who dont even like pie that much (heretical I know but they exist). They are for the people who need to bring something to Thanksgiving dinner but a pie is too much or someone else is doing it or they don’t want to sit with a pie in their lap in the car for the two hour drive to Grandma’s. This cookie is for them. This cookie is for you.
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Cranberry Filling
The cranberry in these Cranberry thumbprints comes from, you guessed it, cranberry sauce. I already have a quick, easy, dead simple recipe locked and loaded for you. Make a double batch of this cranberry sauce and show up to dinner with both sauce and cookies. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Molds?
The trickiest thing about these cookies is the molds I made them in. Here in Sweden there is a popular baked good called a mazarin, it’s a little almond tart, usually topped with icing. It is baked in individual round fluted molds. They are so common and popular that any large grocery store sells these molds in the same aisle with the foil, paper plates and other small kitchen things. I own a set of these molds because of course I do. I understand this is not reality for everyone else, especially in the States where these molds would be a much more specialized product.
The best work around is to bake the cookies in muffin tins! Both lined and unlined work. Pros of lining: easy clean up. Cons of lining: the dough is very sandy and when you take the liner off your edges won’t be so clean. Pros of not lining: you get a cleaner round edge. Cons of not lining: messy clean up and you might not be able to get the cookies out.
Whichever way you bake them Cranberry Orange Thumbprints are delicious. They look really impress but they are so easy and, because the dough doesn’t need to rest, come together quickly. Make these for the cookie lover/pie hater in your life this Thanksgiving!
Cranberry Orange Thumbprints
Ingredients
For the Cookies
- 25 g potato starch
- 180 g all-purpose flour
- 180 g room temperature butter
- 80 g sugar
- 10 g vanilla sugar or 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 g salt
- 1 orange zested and juiced
- 100 g cranberry sauce
For the Icing
- 4 Tbsp powdered sugar
- 1-2 tsp orange juice
Instructions
Cookies
- In a mixing bowl, combine the room temperature butter, sugar, vanilla sugar (or vanilla extract), orange zest, and salt. Stir until the mixture is thoroughly combined.
- Sift the all-purpose flour and potato starch over the butter mixture.
- Stir all the ingredients together until a smooth dough forms.
- Preheat your oven to 200°C (no fan).
- Take the cookie dough and divide it into even-sized pieces. For the best results, use about 25g of dough per piece.
- Roll into balls.
- Grease the molds you’ll be using for the thumbprint cookies. Place one dough ball in each mold.
- Press the dough down in the center of each mold to create a nice big circle.
- Fill the center of each cookie with cranberry sauce to create the thumbprint.
- Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown
- Once done, remove the tray from the oven and let the cookies cool in the molds.
Icing
- In a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar and orange juice to create the icing.
- The icing should be quite thick for piping, so adjust as needed.
Assembly
- Once the cookies have cooled in the molds, carefully knock them out.
- Use a piping bag filled with the prepared icing to pipe a squiggle around the top of each cookie.
Notes
The baking time is based on the specific molds I am using and the amount of dough needed to fill them. Different molds or tins will require different amounts of dough and different baking times. Check the cookies frequently while baking so you don’t burn them.