Thumbprint Hazelnut Cookies with Jam

Every year, when jam making season arrives I realise once more I have made too many jars which would better be finished to make space for the new generation. Rather than forcing ourselves to have toast with jam for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I prefer making sweet treats calling for jams or fruit sauces, such as Thumbprint Almond Cookies. A couple of days ago I wanted to prepare them once more, realised I was short of almonds and substituted them with ground hazelnuts. The hazelnut version was so good, I am now wondering which one is my favourite… They may look clumsy (the jam is always oozing out of the thumbprint hole during the baking process), but the taste is heavenly.

Before the recipe details I would like to thank Mr. Three-Cookies (from Three Cookies) and Raymund (from Ang Sarap), who invited me to take part in Seven Link Challenge. The challenge consists of presenting 7 links from one’ own blog, each in a different category and then inviting other bloggers to participate in it. The aim is to present some older posts from ones’ blog and to share with the readers our opinions and facts about it.

Choosing the links for the 7 categories was not an easy task. It was however a great occasion to look back on my texts, photos and to have a critical view of my blog. Thank you, once more, Raymund and Mr. Three-Cookies, for tagging me! I will do the best I can. Here are the promised 7 links:

1. The most beautiful post.

I don’t know if I’m influenced by the way it looked in reality, but Asparagus Tempura is my favourite. It’s one of the most beautiful dishes I have ever had on my table.

2. The most popular post.

If I am to believe the number of visit Google has registered, the most popular was Chicken Karaage. I must say it was a very big surprise since I didn’t know there were so many people interested in this Japanese recipe!

3. The most controversial post.

I wouldn’t call it controversial, but since Marmite (the British savoury bread spread) is maybe the most love-or-hate product I have ever used, I might classify the Marmite Muffins as controversial. Believe me, even if you are not a Marmite fan, these muffins are irresistible!

4. The most helpful post.

I have no idea what might seem helpful to my readers. For me the thing that was really helpful was discovering how to make Dashi, or the Japanese stock. Since I started preparing it on my own, I realised how important it was in lots of dishes, not only in soups.

5. The post that was surprisingly successful.

The post which earned me most compliments and interest was Hot Strawberry Sauce. It is my all-time favourite hot sauce and I was positively surprised it appealed to so many readers.

6. The post that didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Actually I will bend here the rules and talk about two posts, both featuring Gochujang, sweet and hot chili paste, the only Korean ingredient I cannot live without.

Black Pudding and Gochujang Toast is the French (or rather European) and Korean fusion snack I would love everyone to try one day. Every time I make it I think how simple it is and how perfect for someone who is fond of gochujang and who adores good black pudding (aka blood sausage).

Scallops with Gochujang are one of the simplest and quickest meals or snacks I can imagine and I would love everyone to taste this combination one day. They go surprisingly well with… sour cream and when scallops are in season I prepare this dish quite often.

7. The post I am most proud of.

I wouldn’t really say here “the post” since the photo isn’t great. Fat Liver Terrine with Port (Foie gras au porto) is rather the culinary accomplishment I still am very proud of.

Duck Fat Liver Terrine is one of my top 5 dishes and usually the most expensive item on the restaurants’ menu. Even though raw fat liver does not cost a fortune and is easy to order from every butcher in France, very few – even French – house cooks ever try preparing it. There is a kind of mystery surrounding its long and a bit complicated preparation. Since there is someone in my family who does it divinely well, I decided to experiment one day on my own and was surprised how fabulous even a less-than-perfect looking home-made terrine is. Since I started making it on my own I have also become very critical to what is served in restaurants and often is simply awful.

It wasn’t easy at all! Now the invitation part! The rule is to choose 5 blogs to continue this game. I bent the rules once more and have chosen three “group” websites created and written by friends, couples or families. I wonder if they easily agree on the seven links’ choice… Hereby, I would like to invite the following bloggers to participate in this challenge:

-Shilpa and Jenny from Baking Devils

-Katherine and Greg from Rufus’ Food and Spirits Guide

-Sara and her sisters, hiding under the pseudos kclever and mclevering, from Three Clever Sisters.

If you want to take part in this links challenge, you are more than welcome!

(I would also have tagged of course Nami and Shen from Just One Cookbook, but Nami already took part in this challenge.)

Now back to the Hazelnut Cookies recipe! These cookies can be baked in any moulds (or even without moulds). This time I used mini-muffin ones to make them really tiny. The recipe calls for matzo bread, but leftover biscuits (even slightly savoury crackers) can be used here too.

Preparation: 1 hour+ 1 h 30 min in the fridge

Ingredients (about 40 mini cookies):

100 g butter, melted

90 g ground hazelnuts

45 g matzo bread or biscuits (sweet or slightly salty)

1/4 teaspoon salt

130 g confectioners’ sugar (or less if using very sweet biscuits instead of matzo bread)

1 egg

half a 300 ml jar of thick jam

Mix everything in a food processor (apart from jam). Put into the fridge for at least 1 hour to become firm.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Fill in the greased mini-muffin – or other –  forms with a 2 cm thick layer of the dough. (You can also form circles and put them simply on a baking sheet, but in my case the cookies spread around them and became flat).

With your thumb (or another similarly shaped tool) make a small indentation in the middle of each cookie. Put once more into the fridge for 30 minutes.

Take the cookies out from the fridge and fill the indentations with jam.

Bake around 10-20 minutes till they become slightly golden (check if the bottoms are well cooked).

Take them out of the oven and take out of the forms when they are cold.

They keep for several days covered with a plastic film.

40 Replies to “Thumbprint Hazelnut Cookies with Jam”

  1. Love viewing your 7 links and was particularly tickled by the post that didn’t get the attention it deserved. The scallops look immensely tantalizing – I will have to try! Enjoyed my visit.

    1. Thank you, Kelly! I am happy you enjoyed the 7 links. The scallops preparation is so easy, it’s really worth trying (unless you can’t have hot food). Let me know if you make this snack one day!

  2. Nice post. Black Pudding and Gochujang Toast is something I can easily imagine and it would be quite delicious. I eat them both (not recently though and never tried them together). Here black pudding is sometimes served with lingonberry jam. Gochujang is like the hot/spicy version.

    I am still planning on making a proper hot strawberry sauce or something similar with another fruit.

      1. I know!!!! I can’t believe you like it too! I have sometimes the same toasts but I grill them without gochujang and then put some sweet chili sauce over it! It’s a pure delight!

    1. Thank you, so much Mr. Three-Cookies! And thank you once more for tagging me! I am very happy to see we have the same preference for “aquired taste” food (pickled herring, black pudding). I taste black pudding in every country I go to (almost all the European countries have this, and I suppose outside of Europe it must exist too). I have even had once an excellent British black pudding (though it wasn’t from the supermarket, but from a good butcher).

    1. Thank you, Clarkie! My grandma used to make some jam cookies too, but they were very crumbly and rather crunchy.

  3. Sissi, those thumb cookies look so good! I am a big fan of hazelnut, so without having the pleasure of tasting either one of your cookie recipes, I am going to say the hazelnut would win in my book! BTW the scallops looks absolutely delicious, I am glad you participated in the challenge!

  4. What an enjoyable post. I got to see some of your posts I had missed. Not to ruin the surprise, but we will be breaking the rules on this one too! Thanks for the shout out. Very nice. I see we’re in good company too. Also, I need to make these cookies. We’re in the same jam!

    1. Thank you, Greg! I am happy you want to participate in this game! It’s fun looking back on the older posts (well, it was also motivating in my case, especially in what concerns some photos I need to improve…). I am looking forward to see you breaking the rules 🙂

  5. Firstly – those cookies… yummy – they remind me so much of something my mother used to make. I have fond memories of coming home from school and drinking a cup of tea and eating a couple of these tasty little morsels 😀

    I loved checking out your links, I’m particularly impressed by the terrine… that looks incredibly professional! I have a load of recipes which I don’t feel got the “attention they deserved”, but the problem was, I posted them in the “early days” of my blog, before I had many followers. I thought I might do a “redux” some time and improve on them. Many of them could certainly do with improved photography 😀

    By the way, from what I can see (based on the background scripts running on your site) you don’t use Google Analytics. You can get WordPress plugins which make setting up the tracking super easy and it gives you a massive amount of information regarding visitors and trends and so forth. Interesting, if you’re into those sort of things 🙂

    1. Charles, thank you so much for all the compliments! Making terrine is quite easy, but takes time. I see it was worth fighting with my fear and answering the 7 questions… I am flattered you like the terrine. I have also posted some nice recipes when I still was a bit shy about meeting other food bloggers and the only messages I received were emails from my family and friends. It’s a good idea to post once more the improved posts if you think they deserve it. (Don’t tell anyone, but from time to time I improve some of my old photos… Take new ones and replace them… although I am still not happy about most of my posts and photos).
      Actually I use google analytics. I just have no visible link on my blog. This is how I knew that Chicken Karaage had the biggest number of visits. I have been using it for several months now. I like it a lot. I rarely look at numbers, but I love observing at the places on the Earth where people spend some time on my blog. It looks like magic 🙂
      By the way, do you remember you advice to look at my server when there was this message about full email box? Well, I checked several times and then I wrote an email to my host and received a very surprising answer: they have emails number limits and not GB! Incredible! They were very nice and automatically tripled my emails limit after my message. Thanks for the advice!
      By the way, I am looking forward to use your conversion tool soon 😉

      1. Aaah, you’re right, sorry – I had scripts from withaglass.com forbidden in my browser’s script blocker for some strange reason, and as a result the scripts from google-analytics.com weren’t showing up in the list of allowed scripts, I see it now! I had some Google Adwords credit and I was running highly targeted adverts for FiveEuroFood.com with the sole purpose of getting a visitor from every single country in the world! (and every single state in the US)! I think I managed to get just about everywhere except maybe 3 places in Africa, North Korea and a handful of these tiny island nations!

        I can’t believe they had an email limit based on number of individual emails… that makes NO sense?! You could have had 1,000 emails of 100 GB in size (to cite a silly example) and they would say “that’s fine, it’s below the 1,500 email limit! Really strange!

        As for my tool – I’m going to resume with that soon. My parents left today from spending some days with me in France so I’ll be starting work again on the tool within the next few days! 🙂

        1. It’s stupid isn’t it? I was really surprised when they said it. Luckily they gave me 3x higher limit.
          I didn’t know Adwords, I must read about it. It sounds crazy. I am not surprised about North Korea though.
          I was sure you were on holidays in Britain. So you had visitors instead. I hope you had a great time in Paris.

          1. You can usually get $100 free Adwords credit, the first time you open the account, though you have to look around for a code online – after that you need to pay to run adverts for your site!

            In fact I was in England – we drove there by the ferry, stayed for 4 days, and then drove back with my parents, and they left today 🙂

            1. Thanks, Charles! I will have a look at this. So all of you went on holidays. I envy you both England and Paris 😉

  6. As someone who has just found your blog I love this roundup of classics! Such a great way to get the very best of your treats.

  7. I love this idea of posting 7 different posts. I definitely loved that strawberry hot sauce recipe, so inventive! Oh, and these hazelnut cookies sound divine!!

    1. Thank you, Caroline. I’m so happy you like it too! Hazelnut cookies are very easy and yes, I shouldn’t boast, but they are divine. (Although as I said they are all messy with the jam oozing out of the thumb holes…).

  8. Another beautiful post…If my son wasn’t allergic to nuts, I would have given this a go straight away…A much nicer version of the super market bough ‘jammie dodgers’. I wonder what the nut substitute can be for this….

    I love the analysis of of all your posts…..beautifully done…I absolutely adore all your chutneys and the hot and spicy strawberry sauce is another example of your brilliant work….

    Thank you very, very much for inviting us to participate in this game…I am going to love doing this…I totally feel honoured….

    1. Thank you Shilpa for, as always, kind and warm words. It’s such a pity your son is allergic to nuts. All the nuts? Almonds too? These cookies are great with almonds. Now that I think you might try them with coconut instead. I am sure they would be delicious (but then I would add much less butter). What do you think?
      I am flattered you like my answers… It wasn’t easy, but after I finished looking through all of my posts I was happy Mr. Three-Cookies and Raymund made me overview my blog. I feel wiser and more motivated to work on both my photos and posts. The lovely comments I have received (such as yours) make me think I was right to play the game. I am very happy you will participate and am looking forward to see your and Jenny’s answers!

    1. Thank you, Kankana! These cookies are a great way to use up the jam, and I think ground almonds might be a better company for your cherry jam.

  9. Sissi! Sorry I’m late here today. It’s almost bed time, but I saw Mr. Three-Cookie tagging you, so I needed to check it out. Thanks for mentioning me and Shen. You are so sweet! =) Yes, your asparagus tempura looks beautiful! The amount of batter is perfect, Sissi!! Your dashi post is a very good one. I’m so happy you make dashi from scratch. I make dashi everyday for miso soup, but I use dashi packet since it’s convenient (at least not powder…right?). It tastes much better when you make from scratch. Also I’d love the scallop dish – gochujang is one of my favorite condiment but I rarely make something with it. Your cookies look too good – I’m about to go to bed and got so hungry! I’ll chat with you soon! I enjoyed reading your post!

    1. Nami, thank you for the kind words and for so many compliments! I keep my dashi (I make big amounts) in the fridge for up to a week, so I don’t know if it’s not a lazy way to deal with it… And I don’t use it every day of course! Discovering one day that scallops were great even with very hot spices was a revelation to me! And scallops+gochujang+sour cream is a combination I love (even though it might sound weird).

    1. Thank you, Robert-Gilles! (Although I insist: it doesn’t look as good on my photo as in reality, nor as good as it tastes 😉 )

  10. Thanks for tagging us! This will be fun (as it was also fun to read through your post, especially as I am new-ish to your blog!)

    1. Thank you, Sara. I’m happy you have enjoyed it! I am looking forward to reading about your 7 links.

  11. This was a great tag, wasn’t it? So fun to go digging into the old stuff. Your most beautiful is truly beautiful … the green is still so bright and fresh and the picture is gorgeous! But I’d have to give blood pudding and chilly sauce a miss … the chilly sauce I can do but the pudding … um, doesn’t sound too appetizing. Now the scallops, that’s another story. Yum! Love the dashi recipe since it’s so very expensive to get it here. Very helpful indeed. Great links!

    1. Hi Ping, thank you for all the compliments! Yes, I knew blood pudding has fewer amateurs than scallops 😉 Presenting it here I learnt Mr. Three-Cookies and Greg love it too!

  12. I am so glad that I bumped on your blog today…this is just wonderful! Your blogand your recipes are so unique!!
    Great way to use up the jams!! Loved your ideas!!

  13. This is the reason for this challenge, to see all of those stuff that I havent seen before in your blog they all looking delicious specially that liver. For the marmite thing I guess I will try again, I never liked it initially but I trust you will try it again in that muffin form I might like it now

    1. Thank you, Sadhana! (Actually, it was raspberry or plum jam, I made with both and both were delicious with hazelnuts).

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