These healthy thumbprint cookies are for families who have both chocoholics and fruity dessert lovers in their ranks! Half of the cookies are filled with strawberry jam, and the other half are studded with chocolate chips and filled with Nutella-style chocolate hazelnut spread.
These thumbprint cookies are my solution to the dilemma that I’m sure a lot of families experience: How to please both the chocoholics and those who prefer desserts without chocolate? Initially, I was just going to make jam-filled thumbprint cookies, but then I knew that I wouldn’t love them all that much. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know that if a dessert is void of chocolate, I’m not too interested. I knew that I had a jar of organic Nutella-style spread in my pantry, so I decided to divide the dough in half and create two different thumbprint cookie flavours: one with the more traditional jam filling, and one with chocolate chips in the dough and chocolate hazelnut spread filling. My mom and I were in our glory with the chocolate version, and my dad was granted his wish to have a non-chocolatey dessert for once.
These cookies turned out just as I wanted them to: Soft and chewy, with undertones of almond and maple. They are sweetened entirely with maple syrup–just ½ a cup in the entire batch, but they still taste plenty sweet–which keeps them nice and moist, with the help of a bit of butter and nut butter.
ingredients you’ll need
You’ll need butter, almond butter, maple syrup, egg, vanilla, light spelt flour, oat flour, baking soda, baking powder, sea salt, almond meal, jam, chocolate chips, and chocolate hazelnut spread.
the method
Preheat the oven to 350 F and line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter, almond butter, maple syrup, egg, and vanilla using electric beaters.
In a medium bowl, stir together the light spelt flour, oat flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and almond meal.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix to combine. If the dough is too wet to form into balls, add a bit more light spelt flour. The dough should be soft, but not ultra sticky.
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Divide the dough in half. To one half of the dough, add ⅓ cup of semisweet chocolate chips. Roll the dough without the chocolate chips into ten balls. (I recommend wetting your hands every so often to prevent the dough from sticking to them.) Place on one of the prepared baking sheets. Wet your thumb and make a deep indentation in the middle of each dough ball. Fill each indentation with 1 teaspoon of jam.
Repeat this step with the other half of the dough on the second cookie sheet. This time, fill each indentation with 1 teaspoon of chocolate hazelnut spread.
Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. Wait 10 minutes before carefully removing them from the cookie sheets with a spatula and transferring them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Store at room temperature or in the refrigerator. They’re great both ways, but I prefer them chilled. In the fridge, they keep for 10 days.
more cookie recipes
- Vegan Chocolate Chip, Pecan, and Cranberry Cookies
- Vegan Peanut Butter S’mores Cookies
- Vegan Ginger Cookies + Mango Banana Soft Serve
And that’s it for today! I hope that you love these healthy thumbprint cookies. If you make them, let me know how you enjoyed them by leaving a comment and rating below the post. And if you share a photo to Instagram, tag it @upbeet.kitchen and #upbeetkitchen. I love seeing what you’ve made.
Enjoy!
Healthy Thumbprint Cookies, Two Ways: Jam and Nutella Chocolate Chip
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 20 cookies 1x
Description
These healthy thumbprint cookies are for families who have both chocoholics and fruity dessert lovers in their ranks! Half of the cookies are filled with strawberry jam, and the other half are studded with chocolate chips and filled with Nutella-style chocolate hazelnut spread.
Ingredients
- ¼ cup organic salted butter, softened
- ¼ cup almond butter
- ½ cup maple syrup
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups light spelt flour, plus more as needed
- 1 cup oat flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- ½ cup roasted almonds, ground into a meal
- ⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips
- 10 teaspoons of your favourite jam (I used strawberry)
- 10 teaspoons of chocolate hazelnut spread (I used La Vida Vegan Organic Hazelnut Chocolate Spread)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F and line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment.
- In a large bowl, beat together the butter, almond butter, maple syrup, egg, and vanilla using electric beaters.
- In a medium bowl, stir together the light spelt flour, oat flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and almond meal.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix to combine. If the dough is too wet to form into balls, add a bit more light spelt flour. The dough should be soft, but not ultra sticky.
- Divide the dough in half. To one half of the dough, add ⅓ cup of semisweet chocolate chips. Roll the dough without the chocolate chips into ten balls. (I recommend wetting your hands every so often to prevent the dough from sticking to them.) Place on one of the prepared baking sheets. Wet your thumb and make a deep indentation in the middle of each dough ball. Fill each indentation with 1 teaspoon of jam.
- Repeat this step with the other half of the dough on the second cookie sheet. This time, fill each indentation with 1 teaspoon of chocolate hazelnut spread.
- Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. Wait 10 minutes before carefully removing them from the cookie sheets with a spatula and transferring them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
- Store at room temperature or in the refrigerator. They’re great both ways, but I prefer them chilled. In the fridge, they keep for 10 days.
Notes
No light spelt flour? You could try using whole spelt flour or all purpose flour. I would recommend starting with 1 cup instead of 1 ½, since spelt and all purpose flours tend to be more dry than light spelt flour.
To make vegan: You can try to make these cookies vegan by using softened coconut oil or vegan butter in place of the butter and a flax “egg” (1 tablespoon ground flax mixed with 2.5 tablespoons water) in place of the egg. I have not tried this yet, though!
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Category: Dessert
Wishing you all a wonderful day! I’ll be back tomorrow with a recipe for chocolate chunk pecan cookie granola. Enjoy!
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