Each one is unique...

Snowflakes and fingerprints that is. Today we woke up to another snowy morning, and last night I made a double batch of Thumbprint (my new favorite) Cookies for Sean to take to the office. SO June Cleaver of me! I was suffering from a serious need to bake yesterday and thankfully Sean's mom sent me this recipe on Monday morning.

This is seriously a great, melt in your mouth, super simple cookie recipe. Chances are you probably have all the ingredients on hand. I, of course, did not and had to make an emergency trip to the store for powdered sugar. I hear it was all worth it though... Husband says "They are more popular than a guy that just won the lottery." I think thats high praise!

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix: I mixed the whole thing by hand.
½ cup butter
½ cup margarine (Didn't have this so I used butter)
½ cup brown sugar, packed
2 egg yolks (reserve whites)
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix in:
2 cups flour
½ tsp. salt

Chill the dough before rolling into SMALL balls. I stuck the dough in the freezer for about 10 minutes before making it into balls. You have to make them pretty small, I got them 5x6 on a standard cookie sheet. I doubled the recipe and got 4 cookie sheets like that. (A LOT OF COOKIES)

Use the remaining egg whites to dip your finger in and make a depression (thumbprint) in the middle of each ball. Its OK to go a little bit deep because they will puff up when they bake. I had to re-dip in egg whites each time to keep my fingers from sticking to the dough.

Bake for 6-8 minutes on an ungreased cookie sheet until they firm up or are slightly brown around the edges.

While the cookies are cooling make a simple icing with butter, milk and powdered sugar. I tried to measure to give you a start, but its one of those things you're probably going to have to feel. It should set up but not get super hard in about an hour.

I used 2Tbls. butter, 1 1/2 Tbls. Milk, a splash of vanilla, and 3/4 cup of powdered sugar. My butter was cold in the fridge so I put the milk and butter in the microwave for a few to soften it up. I think I ended up using more powdered sugar than I might have needed. because I ended up totally melting the butter.
For Sean's office, I did just plain white, and sprayed them with silver luster dust (in honor of the snow and new years) Photo taken prior to spraying with luster dust.
 

For Christmas, Sean's mom tinted it pink and green, but you can make it any color you like, of course. Since the white is kind of boring, I did three shades of green/teal for Sean and I to devour this weekend. I hear they also freeze really well, but I am pretty sure we will not be testing that theory with the cookies at our house.

This Recipe is courtesy of Sean's mom, my mother-in-law, Kay Collins and her mother, "Grandma Marie" (who I was never fortunate enough to meet.)  I have a few other Kay recipes I need to post here too, but this is a great one to start with!