Eye Love Mom Cookies

These Eye Love Mom cookies are a Mother’s Day project disguised as a recipe, soft peanut butter thumbprints filled with bright raspberry jam and finished with whimsical piped eyes and lashes. The result looks like a cartoon character on a cookie, and the decorating is the half the fun, especially with kids.

The base is a classic peanut butter cookie dough enriched with brown sugar, vegetable shortening, and a splash of milk for tenderness. The 3 to 4 hour chill is what makes the dough workable, less sticky, easier to shape, and prevents spreading in the oven so the thumbprint indents stay deep enough for jam.

Raspberry jam drops into each indent after baking, then melted chocolate piped from a snipped plastic bag draws the eye outlines and lashes. A simple powdered sugar icing tinted with food coloring lets you write “Mom” or hearts in any color you like. The whole project takes a couple of hours, but most of it is hands-off chilling and decorating, which means easy supervised work for little hands.

Kitchen Tips

• Don’t skip the chill, warm dough thumbprints flatten and lose their indent during baking.
• Use a small measuring spoon to make the indents for uniform shape and depth.
• Tap chocolate-piped designs onto the cookies while the chocolate is still warm and pliable.
• Let icing dry completely before stacking cookies, otherwise the designs smear.

Variations

• Swap raspberry jam for strawberry, apricot, or lemon curd for different filling colors.
• Use Nutella instead of jam for a chocolate-hazelnut center.
• Add ½ cup of crushed peanuts to the dough for extra crunch.