As much as I love spending hours in the kitchen on a baking project, sometimes I just don’t have the time or energy. I love cookies for their simplicity–there is comfort in the familiar steps of cookie baking yet endless creative potential through different flavor combinations. I am particularly fond of cookies with jam–but why is it that the beloved thumbprint cookie all but disappears after December? It should be a crime to relegate thumbprint cookies to holiday baking alone and I’m here with a non-holiday jammy cookie to right that wrong.
These blueberry lavender thumbprint cookies are delicate and perfect for spring or summer. Sweet-tart blueberries are slow-roasted with honey to form a jam, which is nestled inside a lavender almond cookie base. The floral notes of the lavender are subtle and bring a freshness to the overall cookie. Making your own jam is an easy way to elevate the flavor of the cookie, ensuring the filling is not too sweet and carries an intensely fruity flavor. If you have made some of my other recipes, you’ll know that I have developed a love for slow-roasting fruit to make jam. This is a great, easy method to maximize the flavor of your fruit and create a small batch of jam to bake with or to spread on toast, have with yogurt, etc. Strawberries are one of my favorite jams to bake in this way, but blueberries work well too. You can add just a couple tablespoons of a sweetener of your choice, a bit of acidity, and any other spices or herbs you’d like and then just slow-roast until the fruit becomes soft and the juices thicken.
I also incorporated a bit of almond flour into this cookie, which adds a nice toasty and nutty undertone to the cookie. For the lavender, I used culinary lavender buds, which I ground up along with the granulated sugar in the recipe to evenly disperse the flavor throughout the cookie. If you can’t get your hands on lavender, feel free to try this recipe with fresh thyme–due to thyme’s subtle flavor, you’ll likely need to be much more generous with the thyme than the lavender. Feel free to give your dough a final test before rolling into balls to see if you need to add a bit more.
And if you need more thumbprint cookies in your life, try my recipe for apricot tahini thumbprint cookies!
Blueberry lavender thumbprint cookies
Course: Cookies and barsDifficulty: Baking session30
cookies30
minutes1
hourAn easy slow-roasted blueberry jam puts these blueberry lavender thumbprint cookies over the top. Blueberries are slow-roasted with a bit of honey and lemon, and nestled in a crunchy cookie flavored with toasted almond flour and lavender. They’re dainty, delicate, and wonderfully aromatic. While these can be made with store-bought jam, I recommend trying this easy slow-roasting method for the best flavor.
Ingredients
- For the blueberry jam
1 pint blueberries
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 Tbsp honey
- For the cookie dough
3/4 cup (72g) almond flour
1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
1 tsp lavender buds*
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Make the blueberry jam
- Preheat the oven to 325F. To a glass or ceramic baking dish add one pint of washed blueberries, the lemon juice, lemon zest, and honey. Stir to coat the blueberries evenly.
- Bake for 40-60 minutes, stirring every 15-20 minutes until the blueberries are very soft and most of the juices have cooked off, leaving behind a very thick syrup. Remove from the oven and use the back of a fork to mash up the blueberries until you have a jammy mixture (it’s okay if some of the blueberries are still in large pieces). Let cool, transfer to a container, and refrigerate overnight to set.
- Make the cookies
- Add the almond flour to a skillet and place on medium low heat. Stir occasionally and cook until the almond flour smells nutty and turns golden brown in color, being sure to stir more frequently as the flour begins to toast to avoid burning (3-4 minutes total). Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature.
- Place the sugar and lavender together in a food processor and pulse until the lavender buds are broken up finely. Alternatively, add a few tablespoons of sugar to a spice grinder or mortar and pestle with the lavender buds and grind. Then, mix in with the rest of the sugar.
- In a mixing bowl, add the room temperature butter and sugar and cream with an electric mixer until you achieve a smooth, fluffy texture. Then add in the vanilla and salt and mix to combine. By hand, stir in the toasted almond flour and all-purpose flour and mix just until combined.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat. Scoop up one tablespoon of dough, use your fingers to help compress the dough and bring it together, and then roll between your palms. Using your thumb or the back of a teaspoon, make an indentation in the center of the cookie. Repeat with each one. If cracks form in your cookies, use your hands to help smooth them over and bring the cookie together.
- Cover with a dish towel or plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour. This step is important to prevent the cookies from spreading in the oven.
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Add about 1/2 a teaspoon of blueberry jam to the well in the center of each cookie, being sure to put just enough jam to fill the indentation. If you overfill the cookies with a large mound of jam, it will leak out. Bake for 14-16 minutes, rotating the trays halfway through, until the bottoms of the cookies have just begun to turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.
Notes
- Culinary grade lavender can be found in the spice aisle of many supermarkets or online. If you don’t have access to lavender, you can make these cookies without it or try using finely minced fresh thyme. You will likely need at least a tablespoon of fresh thyme, as it is very mild in flavor.
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