Chocolate Cherry Thumbprint Cookies (Vegan)
Chocolate cherry thumbprint cookies - these delicious vegan cookies are easy to make and perfect for Christmas! Consisting of rich chocolate shortbread cookies filled with cherry jam; they are crisp around the edges, soft in the middle and very, very moreish!
Servings 27 cookies
Ingredients
- 250 g (2 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
- 50 g (5 packed Tablespoons) cocoa powder
- 200 g (7oz / ½ + ⅓ cup) vegan block butter (NOT the spreadable kind. I use Naturli Vegan Block) slightly softened
- 100 g (½ cup) caster (superfine) sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract (optional)
- pinch salt
- 2 Tablespoons non-dairy milk
- about 150 g (5 oz) cherry jam
Instructions
- Line two baking sheets with baking parchment. Sift together the flour and cocoa powder.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar, vanilla and almond extracts and salt until smooth and creamy.
- Add the dry ingredients and stir with a spatula until all of the flour is moistened and no lumps of butter remain.
- Drizzle over the milk and mix to form a dough. If it is too soft to work with, place the dough in the refrigerator for half an hour or so until it has firmed up a bit.
- Using a 1 Tablespoon measure, scoop up some dough and use your hands to roll it into a ball.
- Place the ball on the baking sheet and use the floured end of a wooden spoon or spatula, or a ¼ teaspoon measure, to make an indentation in the top. Press about halfway through the dough and wiggle the spoon around a bit to make the indentation wider.
- Repeat with the rest of the dough, placing the shaped cookies spaced apart on the baking sheets.
- Fill each indentation with about ½ teaspoon of jam, filling it right to the top. Place the trays of cookies in the freezer for 15 minutes, or the fridge for 30, while you preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/gas mark 4.
- Bake the chilled cookies for 18-20 minutes until they are firm to the touch and the jam is bubbling. I do 20 minutes.
- Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for a couple of minutes then carefully transfer them to a wire rack and allow to cool completely. Once cool, store in an airtight container.
Notes
- All of my recipes are developed using grams and as with all of my baking recipes I really do recommend using the metric measurements with a digital scale rather than the cup conversions. Cups are a wildly inaccurate measuring system and you will get far better, more consistent results using a scale, not to mention that it is also easier and less messy than cups!
- Make the indentation immediately after rolling the dough into a ball, don't roll out all of the cookies then make all of the dents, do them one by one. This will help to avoid the dough cracking.
- See post above for tips, details and step-by-step photos.