Maple Thumbprints

This time of year, I have to make some maple recipes! I picked up maple syrup in Canada when I was there, and I have made a couple of different recipes. I’ve made other cookies, as well as a maple pie. Maple pie is interesting, a lot like a pumpkin pie. It is very sweet, but we also added pecans for flavor. I may end up making the pie for Thanksgiving, but I’m not sure yet. What do you like to bake for Thanksgiving?

I’ve gone from not really liking thumbprint cookies to making them regularly. I think that I didn’t like the uncooked filling, but you can change up the filling and make them better. I hadn’t seen a maple thumbprint cookie before, but how could you go wrong with these flavors. These cookies have maple in the cookie and in the filling, as well as spices. You let the dough chill, overnight in my case, which allows the spices and the maple to mingle together. You could refrigerate the dough less, but I think that it needs the time to blend.

This recipe makes a lot of cookies, 4 dozen! When I see a recipe that calls for 4 cups of flour, I will usually halve the recipe, but with the spice measurements that seemed too difficult. It’s a lot of dough, but the cookies aren’t that large, so that helps. I didn’t have any issues making the dough, and baking went smoothly. I noticed that the thumbprint indentations baked out, so I did reform the indentation when the cookies came out of the oven. These cookies have a lovely spiced flavor, and aren’t too sweet.

Maple Thumbprints

4 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, room temperature

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup maple syrup

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups powdered sugar

Pinch of salt

¼ cup maple syrup

3-4 tablespoons water

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter on medium until light. Add the sugar and brown sugar and mix on medium until combined. Stir in the maple syrup, egg and vanilla. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture. Stir until the flour is incorporated into the dough. Do not over mix.

Divide the dough in halves and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Chill for 2 hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and shape the dough into 1” balls. Make an indentation in the top of each ball before baking.

Bake for 12-13 minutes, until the cookies are set. If baking two sheets at a time, rotate the sheets top to bottom and front to back halfway through the baking time. Once the cookies come out of the oven, reform the indentation in each cookie. Allow the cookies to cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheet before removing to a wire rack. Allow the cookies to cool completely before filling.

Make the filling: in a mixer bowl, combine the powdered sugar, salt, maple syrup and three tables
poons of water. Mix on low until smooth. If needed, add additional water to make the filling a pourable consistency.

Fill or pipe the filling into the indentation of each cookie. Allow the filling to set before serving.

Recipe from e2 bakes brooklyn