epicurious
Olive Oil Thumbprints With Lemon Curd
Adding a healthy glug of olive oil to the shortbread dough for these lemon thumbprint cookies makes them extra-tender and crumbly.
👥 55 Servings👤 Amy Thielen📖 epicurious
🥘 Ingredients
Check off ingredients as you prepare them:
🍳 Cookware
- ●pan
- ●saucepan
- ●bowl
- ●whisk
- ●spatula
- ●blender
- ●oven
- ●baking sheet
- ●wooden spoon
📝 Preparation Steps
1
Make the lemon curd
2
Fill a saucepan with a few inches of water for a double boiler, and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Whisk together the lemon juice, sugar, eggs, and egg yolks in a medium heatproof bowl until smooth. Set the bowl over the pan of simmering water and reduce the heat to low. You want heat, but not steam that huffs out through the cracks.
fresh lemon juice (from 7 to 9 lemons, preferably Meyer lemons)1 cuplarge eggs2large egg yolks6large egg yolk1
3
Cook the curd slowly, over low heat, stirring continuously with the rubber spatula in a figure-8 motion, scraping down the sides of the bowl, and occasionally whisking. It should take about ⏱️ 2 minutes to feel hot to the touch, and ⏱️ 5 minutes for the curd to start to thicken. After 8 to ⏱️ 10 minutes, the curd will look shiny, smooth, and jelled. Add the salt and the elderflower liqueur, if using. Then, whisk in the cold butter, one tablespoon at a time. The curd should look like a soft pudding and taste like warm, hyper-lemony butter.
4
Pour the curd through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl and stir it to release the steam. After it cools down, press a small piece of plastic wrap against the surface of the curd and refrigerate. (You can make the lemon curd up to 4 days in advance.)
5
Make the cookies
6
Combine the flour, ¼ cup sugar, salt, and rosemary in a wide bowl. Add the butter and work it into the flour mixture with a pastry blender until the butter is reduced to fine bits and nearly disappears. Add the olive oil in a thin stream and quickly stir in with a fork, keeping the flour mixture light and fluffy.
7
Combine the egg yolk and milk in a small bowl and drizzle over the flour mixture. Immediately whisk the dough together with a fork, rotating the bowl to evenly distribute the moisture, until the dough holds together when pinched. It will be a little crumbly, but it should be able to form a rough ball; if the dough feels too dry, dribble in a little more milk. Press the dough down against the bottom of the bowl to hydrate and let sit for ⏱️ 10 minutes.
large egg yolks6large egg yolk1
8
Arrange the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat to 325ºF. Put the sugar for finishing in a small bowl.
Sugar for finishing
9
To keep the bottoms of the cookies from coloring too much, bake them on doubled-up cookie sheets—the air gap between them acts as insulation.
10
For each cookie, pinch off a small wad of dough—about 2 teaspoons’ worth—and form into a flattened ball. Press and turn the dough between your thumb and forefinger to make a rounded puck shape. (Don’t overwork the dough in pursuit of perfectly round balls; this is a rustic cookie.) Toss the balls in the bowl of sugar to coat and arrange on the baking sheets in rows, leaving about 2 inches between them. Press the butt end of a wooden spoon into the center of each cookie to make a fairly deep, fillable depression.
11
Bake the cookies for 15 to ⏱️ 17 minutes, until the bottoms are light golden brown and the tops just barely bronzed at the edges; these cookies are best when only lightly browned. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool.
12
Spoon the cold lemon curd into a quart-sized plastic bag and snip off a corner. Fill the center wells of the cooled cookies with the lemon curd and set aside for at least ⏱️ 4 hours for the lemon curd to fully set.
13
The cookies can be stored in a covered tin, in single layers separated with parchment paper, for up to a week.
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