💕Raspberry-Almond thumbprint snowflake spritz cookies! Bake a new kind of thumbprint cookie this year. We have 2 sets of snowflakes disks plus a Christmas wreath and ornaments disks that all make great shapes for thumbprints!💕

The base cookie is one of my most popular recipes over the years. “Incredibly Almond Spritz Cookies”. (I also give non-almond options.) I created this recipe in 2016 and blogged it as sparkling snowflakes with a pretty white luster dust shimmer.

This year they’re plain cookies with no decorating needed, just a thumbprint in the snowflake centers, filled with raspberry pastry filling. Most people use jam, and that would work fine, too, but this stuff is amazing!

In the main photo above I show 9 of our 16 snowflakes shapes and the wreath. Here’s our Snowflakes and More Snowflakes! disk sets, and our Christmas Two set that has the wreath. Later I also show cookies made with 4 of our Christmas Ornaments disks!

Our website has all of our 200+ disk shapes, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, baking accessories plus more about our Women/Family Owned company in beautiful Colorado Springs! Ordering HERE helps us the most and we appreciate it! 🙏impressbakeware.com

All products are on our Etsy shop.

Our Amazon shop has our cookie press and disks and embossed rolling pins.

🎉 15% OFF Last SALE of 2025 ❗
🎄Make edible art for the Holidays, because baking should be fun!
Discount on our cookie press disks, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, luster dusts, cookie cutters & baking accessories. Sale December 26 – January 4, 2026, on our website and Etsy shops ONLY! (Links above) Sale excludes holiday gift sets and our recipe book.

Let’s Bake!

Impress! Incredibly Almond Spritz Cookies

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened (not melted) (I recommend Land O Lakes brand as I know it creams well. I have had trouble with some generic butters not creaming properly and making the dough hard to press)
1/2 cup plus 3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1/3 cup canned Solo® Almond Cake and Pastry Filling NOTE: STIR it well if it has separated! It should be smooth and creamy.
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 Tablespoon almond extract
1 egg
4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Solo brand cake & Pastry Filling, in Almond and Raspberry flavors. The almond goes IN the dough and the raspberry fills the thumbprints! Search what stores sell it locally for you, or you can always order it online. Totally worth it! Use any extra on toast, waffles, pancakes, ice cream, etc. I am guilty of eating it with a spoon. 🤣

(If almond isn’t your thing there are other recipes on here you could choose from. Here’s 2 options: How to make Christmas Trees Cookies post has my gold standard spritz recipe, vanilla-honey spritz; Chicks & Eggs, Bunnies & Carrots- Easter Spritz has a cream cheese spritz recipe. They are both tasty and press great! Browse the home page for more recipes and ideas!)

Preheat oven to 400°F.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.

Cream the butter well. Perfect spritz cookies begin with super-creamed butter. I use an electric mixer and set it on “whip”. You want seriously fluffy butter. It becomes lighter in color when properly creamed. Next add the sugar and cream it well again.

With every additional ingredient make sure you re-fluff the mixture. Add the almond filling and cream it again. Isn’t that aroma incredible? Add the vanilla and almond extracts and the egg and fluff it up again after each addition. The dough has pretty specks of almond at this stage.

Add the flour mixture a little at a time on low speed until it is completely incorporated in the mix. This dough has a nice dry feel, and like all good spritz doughs is not too soft.

You can always troubleshoot a spritz dough by adding water or vanilla extract a teaspoon at a time to stiff, dry dough, or adding flour a tablespoon at a time to overly sticky or soft dough. Perfect spritz dough has a soft malleable texture that is not too sticky or too stiff.

It should not stick to your hands. You can always knead it by hand at the end if your mixer is leaving any flour unincorporated. Smooshing it into a play-dough like texture by hand is actually pretty fun.  Watch some of my videos if you need to see what a correct spritz dough texture looks like.

Get your disks and pack your dough into your cookie press barrel, using the back of a spoon to press the air bubbles out as you add dough. This helps create consistent pressure to avoid mis-shaped cookies.

Place the disk in the bottom ring, attach to your press, and start pressing onto an un-greased cookie sheet. Use a consistent rhythm to keep the shapes a uniform size. It’s not at all uncommon for your first few cookies to be mis-shaped, as pressure needs to build in the barrel to make consistent shapes. It’s totally ok! Just throw them back in the bowl to be re-pressed. If you’re still having trouble pressing (mis-shaped cookies, trouble sticking to the pan, etc) press one cookie into the air and wipe it off and toss back into the bowl to re-set your pressure in the press. You can also refrigerate your cookie sheets for 5 minutes if sticking is an issue. (There are more troubleshooting tips on the Troubleshooting and Decorating Tips page- see the top menu on the blog homepage, bottom if you are on mobile.)

If using a one-click-per-cookie type press remember that you don’t always have to follow that guideline. Some shapes may take more or less than one click and that’s ok! Cookies don’t have to come out in even “clicks”. One click, half a click, it doesn’t matter. A press (any press) is a dough pump (it’s kind of like a caulking gun). It’s simply a mechanism for pumping dough out, however many (or few) “clicks” it takes. Again, you can read all about that in the Troubleshooting and Decorating Tips page if you’re new to this.

Before baking, add the “wells”, the thumbprints where the raspberry filling will go. I have long-ish nails that made it hard to make thumbprints in the dough, so I improvised. Instead of making thumbprints, I used the cap end of my chap stick. 😂 It worked surprisingly well and made neat-edged depressions in the dough!

First I used a sifting spoon to sprinkle a little sugar on the tops of the pressed cookie dough. This kept the chap stick top (or thumb) from sticking to the dough. It also adds a sweet pop to the final cookies. 😉

Make depressions in the centers of the pressed shapes.

Now you have a choice to make! Traditionally, the jam is added to thumbprint cookies at this stage and baked along with the cookie. This sets the jam and makes it more stable at room temperature. I tried it that way and it was great! A very traditional flavor and texture.

But then I decided that adding this already room temperature stable filling after baking was also a great option! Adding it later also allowed some of the snowflakes to hold their shapes better. This option is best if you will use the cookies within a day or two. The longer they dry out, the more they taste like the baked filling version anyway. So if you’re going to be eating these for days and days, probably bake the filling.

So, if you want to bake the filling, or if you are using jam instead, add it now! Wetting the spoon keeps the filling from sticking to it, making it release more easily. I suggest 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of filling. Plop it in the wells and smooth it out with a damp finger for a neater appearance. TIP: Be generous with the amount of filling, it shrinks significantly in baking.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for 6-10 minutes or until the edges just barely begin to brown.  Check them early and often as all ovens are different, and spritz can brown quickly once they start to go. Don’t overbake these. As soon as they look puffed up, dry, and set, they’re done. A little browning on the edge is ok, but the longer they bake the drier they will be! And they’re really good when not too dry!

Let them cool for four or five minutes before removing to a cooling rack. If they’re too soft right after baking they may break when you lift them, and if you wait too long they could stick to the pan. With time you’ll get a feel for it. Check them to see if they’re ready to be moved. If not, wait a few more minutes. Keep your spatula/lifter FLAT when removing them and they’ll come off cleanly!

Here’s how some snowflakes turned out with the baked filling.

OK now the other option. Add the filling to the baked cookies. The wells stayed nice and defined through baking!

I used a 1/4 teaspoon to add the filling, Again it helped to have a cup of warm water handy to dip the spoon in. This helped the filling release from the spoon more easily.

Use a damp fingertip to smooth the filling into a nice round shape.

The filling will set and develop a light gel-like surface after several hours. It doesn’t get as gummy or gelatinous as baked jam, but it stays… how can I describe this? Juicier? Softer? My family and I liked this texture just as much as the baked filling. It’s especially good the first day or so. Give it a try!

In the beginning of this post I said I had also used some of the Christmas Ornaments disks. I used the Bell, Ornaments 2, 4, and 5 (bottom row). They had shapes that were easy to put wells in!

That’s it! Raspberry-Almond Thumbprint Snowflakes Spritz Cookies!

I hope these bring some sweet happiness to your Holidays!

🙏We have a request💕 If you’re enjoying our recipes, *EVERY DISK & PIN PURCHASED helps us stay in business* & supports our families! Impress is a women/family-owned USA small business in Colorado. We design, make, & sell over 300 shapes of cookie press disks & dozens of embossed rolling pins. The recipes we share are free – we have no ads on this recipe blog – we make our money selling disks & pins. The recipes give our customers creative ideas and attract new customers!💕 THANK YOU! 💕~Susie the Disk & Pin Designer

Happy Baking!

~Susie

Disk Designer/Co-Owner at Impress! Bakeware, LLC

Our website has all of our 200+ disk shapes, cookie press, embossed rolling pins, baking accessories plus more about our Women/Family Owned company! impressbakeware.com

All products are on our Etsy shop.

Our Amazon shop has our cookie press and disks and embossed rolling pins.

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