A Recipe for Walnut Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies – or “Birds Nest Cookies”, (made with Jam) as part of my Christmas Baking Countdown. I am trying to recreate family recipes to make new memories this Christmas. Impact-Site-Verification: -1767196795

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Christmas Cookie Baking Countdown

We are keeping busy this December trying to recreate some old family favourite recipes. A few years ago, I had given myself a 12 Cookies of Christmas baking project – to improve my cookie baking skills. It worked – a little!

This year I am revisiting some of those recipes – and testing out some new ones. So far, we have baked and frozen the traditional Dark Fruit Cake and baked (and hidden) five batches of cookies:

1. Vegan Traditional Shortbread Cookies

2. Walnut Football Cookies

3. Vegan Butter Pecan Cookies

4. Vegan Cocoa Sugar Cookies

5. Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

Birds Nest Cookies

Today I recreated my husband’s memories of Birds Nest Cookies. Nobody had the family recipe, so I took some tried and tested recipes – and changed them to match his memories!

Walnut Raspberry Thumbprint

My husband remembered the cookies as a soft and fluffy cookie, rolled in Walnut pieces with a thumbprint in the middle filled with Raspberry Jam. I LOVE Raspberry Jam – so I was all in for making these.

The cookies are a traditional butter cookie – but made with brown sugar and vanilla for a bit of extra flavour, and made with two egg yolks to help bind the dough together while lightening them up. (Egg yolks soften up cookie dough.)

I have now made them quite a few times, so the recipe has evolved – and my husband says they are now as he remembers them! Either way, they keep disappearing!

A Printable Recipe Card follows at the bottom of this post!

Birds Nest Cookie Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup butter (salted, softened)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs, separated

1 cup chopped walnuts (We crushed the walnut pieces in a plastic bag using a rolling pin)

1/2 cup raspberry jam

Birds Nest Cookie Preparation

Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add vanilla and egg yolks – beat in.

Gradually mix in flour – beat. Refrigerate dough for 1 hour or so until workable.

Prepare pans with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Take tablespoons of dough and roll into balls or disks. It takes a little while to get this process going well – I started out by trying the ball method – but I find it a little easier to shape the dough into little hockey puck shaped disks.

Dip tops of balls or disks of dough into egg white and then walnuts.

Place dough on prepared cookie sheet, then indent the middle of the dough with a knuckle of index finger – or in my case – the rounded end of a kitchen knife. It doesn’t matter what you use to create the thumbprint – you just want a nice little smooth indent where you can put the jam.

Arrange a few more walnuts around the edge of the cookie if there are bare spots.

Bake cookies in 350 degree F oven for 12 minutes.

Leave cookies on parchment lined cookie sheets, fill thumbprints with raspberry jam.

Return cookie trays to 350 degree oven for 10 more minutes.

Remove cookies from oven and let cool.

This recipe yields big soft cookies because of the egg yolks. The egg white dip helps the walnuts to stick to the cookie dough. There is a lot of working with the dough with your hands in this recipe, and it may take a few tries to get the shaping and dipping just right – but you’ll get there. They taste wonderful!

Happy December baking! Do you make this type of cookie and is that how you make them?

Below is a printable recipe card from RecipesGenerator. Please give it a try!

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