Recipe Flash: Peanut Butter & Jelly Thumbprints

AFTERNOON PICNIC: Sundried Tomato-Sausage Frittata Sandwich; Fennel-Cabbage Slaw; Peanut Butter & Jelly Thumbprints; Spiked Lemonade

Peanut Butter and Jelly: an enduring combination.

Since childhood, my sisters and I have loved to make and eat Thumbprint Cookies. To me, a chocoholic more than a fruit dessert person, I regained my skepticism each time we set out to make these fruit-filled little cookies: shouldn’t we be making Chocolate Chip? But then each time I’d take a bite of the fresh-from-the-oven Thumbprints, I’d remember how good the combination of crumbly cookie and sweet jam really is. Of course you can fill thumbprints with anything, including melted chocolate chips, if you’re a more devoted chocoholic even than I. And here, I added peanut butter in addition to the standard jelly. If regular thumbprints don’t evoke your childhood the way they do for me, I trust that this flavor combination, stolen from the quintessential kid sandwich, will.

From my kitchen, albeit small, to yours,

Cara, THE QUARTER-LIFE COOK

Peanut Butter & Jelly Thumbprint Cookies
Makes about 25

Ingredients
¼ cup packed light brown sugar
1 stick butter, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 egg yolk
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
jelly—preferably smooth, seedless raspberry
1 1/2 tablespoons natural peanut butter
3 tablespoon sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Mix brown sugar, butter, vanilla, and egg yolk in a medium bowl. Stir in the flour and the salt and mix until dough holds together.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place about 1 inch apart on a parchment-covered cookie sheet. Press thumb deeply in center of each.

Combine the peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk and drop about ½ teaspoon of this mixture into the depression in each cookie.

Bake for 6 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, and press the thumbprint again (over the peanut butter), using a 1 teaspoon measuring spoon, since they’ll be too hot to touch. Top the peanut butter with ¼ to ½ teaspoon of jelly—no need to smooth it.

Return to oven and bake for another 4 minutes until the cookies are slightly golden. Smooth the jelly and let cool completely.