Recent Posts

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Pistachio Linzer Thumbprint Cookies

Photobucket


The host for this week's Sweet Melissa Sundays is the gracious Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures. The recipe, originally chosen by Dawn of Growing Up (And Having Fun) After 40, was Pistachio Linzer Thumbprint Cookies. I'm glad this recipe came up because I've so often seen thumbprint cookie recipes I've wanted to try, but never had an excuse. Now, I finally had one!

These were a breeze to make - everything is done right in the food processor. I love recipes like these, especially when life is busy. While the cookies are in the over, all you have to do is pop the processor bowl in the dish washer and clean-up is pretty much done.

Since I already had a bag of pistachios in the pantry, I decided to use them... even though they were salted. I placed them in a colander, rinsed them with cold water, towel dried them and toasted them for about 10 minutes at 180 degrees to dry them. I think this trick actually worked out okay.

Due to a very busy week, I wound up chilling my dough for about a day and a half. I read that some other's had problems with it being too stiff and cracking, so I took my dough out of the fridge about while I prepared the cookie sheet, egg whites and chopped nut toppings. Thankfully, I had no problems with the stiffness of the dough. I also had a great little tool that made the Thumbprinting process nice and easy. It is intended to use in cake decorating - I've used it for making fondant flowers and such, but it really was quite helpful with these cookies.
Photobucket


Photobucket


Photobucket


In the middle of coating my cookies in chopped pistachios, I ran out of pistachios! So I chopped up some sliced almonds for the remaining half of my cookies. Also, since the fiance isn't such a fan of jam in his cookies, I filled about a third of the cookies with chocolate chips instead of jam... even though he isn't such a chocolate lover either. I thought the chips would get melty in the oven and that I could just spread them when they were removed. However, that wasn't really the case and I decided to pipe some nutella to fill in the gaps.

Photobucket


Photobucket


Photobucket



These were quite tasty - both the chopped almond & chopped pistachio coating worked well. And the chocolate-nutella filling was equally as delicious as the strawberry jam filling I used. The cookies were surprisingly soft. I thought they'd be very dry and crumbly like shortbread, but they weren't so much so. Thanks for helping out and hosting, Tracey! For the recipe, see her blog post here. Visit the other SMS bakers' blogs to see how their Thumbprint cookies came out. I love cookie month!

12 comments:

Julie said...

YUM! I bet these were amazing with nutella and chocolate. I have a false sense that they're healthy with the fruit preserves :)

Unknown said...

Hey Stephanie! Gorgeous cookies - I love that you filled some of them with Nutella! I'm with you on the food processor - it made this recipe super simple. Oh, and thanks for the tip on the pistachios, that's good to know! Glad you could bake along this week :)

Tiff said...

I love, love, love the idea of filling these cookies with nutella! They all look beautiful.

Gloria - The Ginger Snap Girl said...

Your fillings are making my mouth water! I love nutella and love strawberry jam. I am glad to hear the nutella turned out well because I'm thinking of using that next time I make these. Yum. :) Beautiful cookies!

rebecca @ beurrista said...

One can never go wrong with chocolate and nutella. That's a great idea.

Nina said...

Nutella? Delicious! These cookies look amazing!

Suelle said...

These look lovely. It makes me wish I had the patience to tackle more fiddly baking projects like this.

Ingrid_3Bs said...

They look great. (I'm going to keep that nut tip in mind for the next time I have salted nuts. THX!)

My babygirl saw some thumbprint cookies and want to try making them. This sounds like the winning recipe. I'm all for easy (clean up) especially when baking with my kids. :)
~ingrid

Anonymous said...

Such adorable cookies and they can pass off as healthy with the nuts and the jam inside! I love things that give me an excuse to eat more :)

Tessa said...

Your cookies are beautiful! I think I need one of those thumbprint tools as my thumb just ended up making cracks in the cookies :-)

Donna-FFW said...

Fantastic cookies, I love all the different fillings!! I must try my next thumbprints with pistachios, MMMMM!

Eliana said...

They look perfect Stephanie. And you're my kinda girl for filling some up with Nutella. YUM!!!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails