Eggnog Cheesecake Thumbprints (2024)

Ingredients & Substitutions

• Vegan Butter - Look for a high-quality non-hydrogenated vegan butter. I recommend either Earth Balance or Miyoko’s.
• Granulated & Powdered Sugar - Check out my guide to vegan sugars and healthy sugar alternatives.
• Applesauce - The applesauce acts as the binder for these cookies. You can’t taste the applesauce but if you would prefer a different kind of egg replacer, check out my complete guide on replacing eggsto get a few more ideas.
• All-Purpose Flour - I have also made these cookies with a 1:1 Gluten-Free Flour Baking Blend with great success. (<<affiliate link)
• Baking Powder
• Spices - You will need cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and salt
• Vegan Cream Cheese - When it comes to vegan cream cheese, I recommend Go Veggie. Go Veggie’s cream cheese is made from coconut for a non-GMO, no cholesterol, vegan alternative. Their cheese alternatives have more calcium, equal protein, less fat, and fewer calories compared to dairy cheese. Their mission – to help cheese lovers enjoy all their favorite cheesy foods and feel great about it.
• Holiday Nog - This is vegan "eggnog" You can use either homemade holiday nog or buy it at the store.

Step One: Make the Eggnog Cheesecake

Because we are using a small amount of cheesecake in each cookie, it doesn't need to set like a traditional cheesecake. That makes our job even easier! All we need for the cheesecake filling is some vegan eggnog, sugar, spices, and cream cheese.

To make the filling, blend together the cream cheese in a food processor until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides as needed. Add powdered sugar and spices and mix until smooth, about 3 minutes. With the mixer running, slowly pour in holiday nog. Blend until smooth. Transfer to small bowl and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Step Two- Make the Spiced Butter Cookies

Cream the butter and sugar together. Once it's light and fluffy, add the applesauce (this acts as our binder - aka, egg replacer). Once the applesauce is added, the dough will start to look curdled. Don’t worry about this. When the dry ingredients are added, the dough will sort itself out. Add the flour and spices and mix until it just comes together.

I have found that a good small cookie scoop is very useful for thumbprint cookies. We want a small round cookie and a cookie scoop makes this much easier. The round cookies get placed on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Once all the dough is shaped, it's time to turn them into thumbprint cookies. This simply means making a small indentation in the center of the cookie with your thumb.

Step Three - Bake the Cookies

Before we fill the cookies with the eggnog cheesecake, we are going to par-bake them. The filling naturally gets baked quicker than the cookies, so we want to give the cookies about 10 minutes in the oven to get golden brown before filling them. Once they come out of the oven, gently re-indent the centers (as they will puff up a bit as they bake), let them cool for 5 minutes, and then pipe in your filling, creating a nice rounded top on each cookie.

With the cookies filled, they can go back in the oven. Eight minutes later and you've got yourself some incredibly delicious and perfectly festive Eggnog Thumbprint Cookies.

Tips and Tricks

1. The most accurate way to measure flour is to spoon it into your measuring cup, leveling it off with the back of a knife.
2. Do not over-mix the cookies. Mix until the ingredients are just combined so that we have a flaky shortbread-like cookie.
3. Let the cookies cool about 5 minutes before filling them up with cheesecake filling for the second bake. This allows the cookies to get crispy before adding moisture.

If you give this recipe recipe a try, snap a photo and share it on Instagram. Make sure to tag @mydarlingvegan so I can see your creations!

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