Chocolate Orange Marmalade Thumbprint Cookies

What better way to spend some time indoors, than baking cookies. These chocolate orange marmalade cookies are a great choice for a baking day.

Chunky chocolate cookies are always a winner in our house, but what makes these extra special is the addition of a little well of sticky orange marmalade on top of each one.

Whilst these aren’t your traditional thumbprint cookies, they are a good twist on the original. This recipe combines a soft, chewy chocolate cookie and the more simple, yet delicious thumbprint sugar cookie.

I wanted these cookies to be extra citrusy in flavour, so instead of using plain milk chocolate, I decided to swap that out for orange flavoured chocolate and top each cookie with orange marmalade. You can have all the taste and satisfaction of a chocolate cookie with the taste of orange too.

I also add white chocolate, which is melted straight into the cookie dough. Melting chocolate into you cookie dough will give you a rich, creamy tasting dough that makes them taste just a little more special.

How to Make Thumbprint Cookies

There are two steps in creating these cookies topped with marmalade jam. Firstly you make and bake your cookies in the same way as other recipes such as this chocolate chunk cookie recipe or these peanut butter stuffed cookies.

You bake them for 10 minutes before removing them from the oven to add the marmalade. Upon removal from the oven, your cookies will still be soft. Leave them on the baking tray and using the back of a teaspoon you want to make indentations to the top of each cookie, where the marmalade will sit.

You can then spoon a portion of marmalade atop of each cookie and return them to the oven for 5 minutes.

Be aware that the marmalade will be hot and slightly runny when you take them from the oven. When you take them out of the oven for the final time, leave them on the baking tray to harden and begin to set before transferring them to a cooling rack before serving.

Recipe Tips and Guidance

The key to making the best cookie dough is to create it with ingredients that have come to room temperature, which makes it easier to mix them together and then chill the dough. So remove the egg and butter from the fridge a little while before you start making them.

Chilling the cookie dough before baking will help the cookies retain their shape without spreading too much.

Don’t add the egg until the crumbly mixture has cooled. Adding the egg too soon could result in it cooking or scrambling when you attempt to mix it.

If you cannot get orange flavoured chocolate you can substitute it with plain milk chocolate and add a couple of drops of orange extract instead.

Another variation of this cookie could be to use strawberry jam and either a plain milk chocolate or complimenting strawberry flavoured chocolate. Raspberry flavouring will also work well as would ginger chocolate too.

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