Frisian thumb cookies ("dúmkes" = little thumbs) — small, hard, crunchy spiced shortbread studded with chopped hazelnuts and scented with anise, hand-pressed with a thumb to make the signature indent. Long-keeping; a beloved Friesland specialty eaten with tea or coffee.
A Frisian regional specialty. By legend, Frisian women baked these hard, long-keeping cookies as far back as the 1500s for their husbands away at sea; documented baking dates to roughly the 1700s, when they were made at home rather than sold, and only in the 1800s did bakeries produce and sell them widely. Hazelnuts run deep in Frisian tradition: a 17th-century shipwreck recovered off Hindeloopen in 2010 was found loaded with them.
Crumbly nut-and-anise cookie that crackles on first bite then dissolves into sweet butter and toasted hazelnut. The thumbprint dip catches scattered sugar.
Toasted hazelnuts deepen the flavor base; the coarse brown sugar's molasses adds caramel notes a plain white-sugar shortbread lacks. Hand-pressing the thumbprint serves as the baker's signature and keeps the rustic look intact.
Variations
Dúmkes met chocolade — dipped half in dark chocolate. Dúmkes klein — bite-sized for serving with tea.
On the Palate
Where Fryske Dúmkes sits in the Dutch flavor cloud
Toast the nuts and use the coarse brown sugar — the toasting deepens the nutty base and the molasses in the sugar gives the caramel notes that separate these from a flat white-sugar shortbread.
Ingredients
Serves 24
How it's made
6 steps · 35 min active + 55 min waiting
- 18 min
Toast 100 g whole almonds 8 min at 180 °C; chop coarsely.
Watch outThe nuts are done when they smell toasty and turn a shade darker — don't wait for deep brown or they'll go bitter as they cool.
- 25 min
Cream 250 g butter + 200 g brown sugar; beat in 1 egg.
- 35 min
Fold in 400 g flour + 1 tsp cinnamon + 1 tsp ground anise + 1/2 tsp salt + chopped almonds.
- 412 min
Shape into 20 g balls; place on lined baking sheet; press flat with thumb.
Watch outPress each ball with your thumb to leave a shallow dent — that thumbprint is the cookie's signature and keeps the rustic shape.
- 515 min
Bake 175 °C 15 min until golden at edges.
Watch outOnly the edges should turn gold; the centers stay pale. They look underbaked but crisp up firm once cooled.
- 610 min
Cool on rack 10 min.
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