Iced Thumbprint Cookies are easy to make, taste great and are the perfect addition to the dessert table at any celebration.
Iced Thumbprint Cookies
These are our favorite special occasion cookies from the local bakery. When the bakery couldn’t fill an order for her son’s baptism, Barbara decided to tackle these Thumbprint Cookies with Icing herself. And guess what? They were better than the bakery. I ate at least a dozen, so I feel confident saying this.
She turned to a cookbook that is a go-to reference for some of our family’s favorite cookie recipes – the 1971 version of Homemade Cookies by Farm Journal Editors.
Want to make them for Easter? Make the icing yellow or pink.
Want to make them for Christmas? Make the icing green or red, as you can see below.
Want several different colors for the same event? Simply divide the icing before you add the food coloring and go from there.
See where I am going with this? You can make this thumbprint cookies recipe for a variety of special occasions.
You can make this dough several days ahead of time and pull out of the fridge when ready to bake.
How to Make Thumbprint Cookies with Icing
Full recipe for shortbread thumbprint cookies can be found at the bottom of the page.
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Beat butter, salt and vanilla until creamy and fluffy.
- Add sifted flour to butter mixture but don’t over mix. Stir in pecans.
- Chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
- Shaped chilled dough into small balls and place on cookie sheet. Make a small thumbprint on top of each cookie.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly browned and set. Cool completely.
- Make icing using directions below.
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Try some of our other favorite cookies:
Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies
Chocolate Chip Molasses Cookies
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Iced Thumbprint Cookies are easy to make, taste great and are the perfect addition to the dessert table at any celebration.
- 1/2 cup confectioners sugar sifted
- 1 cup butter softened
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
- 2 cups flour sifted
- 1 cup pecans finely chopped
- Icing:
- 2 cups confectioners sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- Milk or cream
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Sift confectioners sugar onto a piece of parchment paper; then measure according to recipe.
- Beat butter, sugar, salt and vanilla until creamy and fluffy.
- Mix in flour that has been sifted in the same manner as confectioners sugar; do not over-mix.
- Stir in pecans.
- Chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
Shape the chilled dough into small balls and place 3 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet.
- Use the tip of your thumb to make a thumbprint in the center of the cookie.
- Bake 12-15 minutes until lightly browned and set; let cool completely.
For icing, mix 2 cups confectioners sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1 Tablespoon of milk or cream at a time (approximately 3-4 Tablespoons total) until icing is smooth. The goal is an icing that isn't runny but perfectly spoonable. Add food coloring for desired color. Spoon icing to fill the thumbprint in the center of each cookie. Let sit until icing hardens.
Love shortbread? Try our Dainty Logs---a shortbread cookie with chocolate chips.
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I’d love a dozen of these! Do you deliver? 🙂
Wouldn’t that be great? We need an UberEats delivery service for recipes we find online!
My kids would totally eat these up!
Such a wonderful Easter treat, and the good thing is that these can be made a head of time!
These are so perfect for Easter!
I enjoy them with mint tea. a very good combination <3
Trying them now!
Yay! Hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
How many does this recipe make?
We can get 60 cookies out of this recipe but it all depends on how big you make them!
Do you use all purpose or self rising flour? Thank you
All-purpose flour!
Do you need to use pecans?
No, you can use any nut you like. We haven’t tried it without the nuts but we imagine it would work without any!
A recipe I have You need 1 cup of sugar in the mix. Did you forget the sugar in the ingredients list??
Ours just uses 1/2 cup of confectioners (powdered) sugar which is the first ingredient in the list. Hope that helps.
I would like to make these for an upcoming wedding. Can the iced cookies be frozen? If so, what is the best way to thaw them? Thank you.
They can be frozen – we do it often! We just take them out of the freezer and let them thaw at room temperature.
A bakery I worked at sold these! We called them tea fills. I moved to a new state and miss them so much lol. Do you use salted or unsalted butter?
Honestly, we usually use whatever type of butter we have on hand but unsalted is usually the way to go in baking since there’s salt in the cookies too! You won’t ruin them if you do use salted butter! Thanks for the comment!
What kind of butter do you use?
We usually use whatever type of butter we have on hand, if we are honest, but unsalted is recommended when baking since there’s salt in the cookies too!
YEAH!!! I lost my recipe and this is it!! Thank you! It killed me to pay anywhere from 79 cents to $1.25 PER COOKIE at the bakeries here!
Yay. so glad it’s THE recipe!