Chocolate Cinnamon No-Bake Thumbprints

Many years ago, when I was a freshman in college, my roommate would use frosting, graham cracker crumbs, and a couple of other ingredients to make some tasty little no-bake cookies. I sent her a text message last year to ask if she remembered the recipe because I thought they might make a neat addition to the assortment of cookies I was making to take to our neighbors.

She couldn’t remember the details of the recipe, but she asked her mom about it. Thankfully, her mom still had a copy of the recipe! I don’t know where it originated, but it yields some cute little cookies that are yummy.

I didn’t end up making these cookies last year, but this year I’ve made a couple of small changes to the recipe and created a chocolate cinnamon variety.

Ingredients

• 1 tub (16 oz.) ready-to-spread chocolate frosting
• 2 cups cinnamon graham cracker crumbs (about 14 cinnamon graham crackers will yield this amount)
• ¼ cup butter, softened
• 1 cup ground nuts (I used walnuts, but pecans would also work well)
• 1 ½ oz. cream cheese, softened
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Instructions

Reserve ¼ cup of the frosting. In a large bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, butter, and remaining frosting; blend well. Shape into 1-inch balls and immediately roll each ball into the ground nuts. With your finger, make an indent in the center of each ball. Place in a single layer in a 9×13 inch pan.

In a small bowl, blend the cream cheese, cinnamon, and reserved frosting until smooth. Place this mixture into a small pastry bag and squirt a small amount into the center of each cookie (if you don’t have a pastry bag you can simply spoon ¼ teaspoon of the mixture into the center of each cookie). Store the cookies in the refrigerator. Yield: 3-4 dozen cookies.

Notes

As you can see, these are super easy to make. I didn’t have a lot of time available this year, so they were a perfect addition to my cookie gift baskets for our neighbors! Because they’re so easy, use few ingredients, and don’t involve a hot oven, they’re a great recipe for kids to prepare. My 4-year-old loved helping me form the cookies into balls. As you may have noticed from the pictures, ours weren’t shaped quite like traditional thumbprint cookies. This is because she used her tiny index finger to make the depressions in the cookies!

I loved the rich chocolate flavor of these, but you could easily adapt the recipe to create other flavors. By changing the flavor of the frosting, using another type of cracker or cookie crumb (such as vanilla wafers), and/or using a different type of nut, you could have a very different cookie. Some year I want to try to create chocolate peppermint ones!

Whether it’s these cookies or some others, I hope you get to enjoy a few Christmas cookies this year. Have you made any? What are your favorite types of Christmas cookies?

Shared at the following:

Weekend Potluck, Thursday Favorite Things, Sunday Dinner Bell, To Grandma’s House We Go! and You’re The Star.