So the holidays are right around the corner. And what are the holidays without some cookies? It’s ok if you are not a big baker, these are really quick and easy, and make you look like you know what you’re doing.

What you’ll need:

• ½ cup of unsalted butter (softened)
• 3 Tablespoons of sugar
• ¾ teaspoon of vanilla extract
• Just a pinch of salt
• 1 cup of all purpose flour
• Whatever jelly/jam you like!

 Step 1: Preheat your oven to 400°F. *Tip- put the rack in your oven in the middle of the oven. This makes sure that your cookies bake nice and evenly.*

Step 2: In a big mixing bowl, put in your butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt. An electric mixer is really helpful in this, and it should be on medium to high speed, until the batter is fluffy and all the ingredients are blended together. If you don’t have a mixer, you have to really work on it for a while and get that light and fluffy texture. Once that’s done, add your flour, make sure to mix it real slow, or that flour is going to “poof” all over the place. Once you have a nice smooth texture, your dough is ready to go.

Step 3: Now take about a teaspoon of dough and roll it into a ball. Put some wax paper on a cookie sheet, and line the balls up leaving about an inch in between to allow them to grow a bit. *Tip- these measurements should leave you with about 16 cookies.*

Step 4: In the center of each ball, use your thumb to make an indentation. Don’t go all the way to the bottom though, or your jelly will leak through or you’ll burn the bottom.

Step 5: Use a spoon to drop some jelly into each thumb print. I like to use either raspberry or apricot, but the decision on what to use is yours!

Step 6: Now it’s time to bake them! Stick  them in the oven until you see them just starting to get a little golden-brown on the top, just about 10 minutes. When you take them out of the oven, let them cool awhile before you transfer them to a plate

And Viola! Perfectly elegant cookies that are sure to impress all your family members and friends. Also I give cookies to people as gifts and they look great in little festive tins.

 Feeling a little nutty?

If you feel like this is way too easy or you want to add an extra oomph, try this variation!

Separate an egg from the yolk. An easy way to do this is to crack the egg only slightly and let the whites drip out while holding the yolk inside.

Put your egg whites in a shallow dish. Grind up some nuts (pecans, walnuts, or almonds work best) and put them in a different shallow bowl. The egg whites allow the nuts to stick on to the dough.

Take a ball of dough and coat it with the egg whites. Then roll it around in the nuts, place it on the cookie sheet and make your print as you normally would.