Tea and Thumbprint Cookies

For many years in Anchorage I was part of a solstice tea party tradition. On a weekday afternoon on or near the solstice we gathered in the living room of my friend Katy’s cozy red house. We sat around a coffee table near the wood stove and drank tea, ate cookies, fruitcake, and sometimes birthday cake. For a group of busy mothers this seemed the ultimate holiday season therapy session. We laughed and we talked and we had an excuse to just sit and relax in a candlelit room. In later years the tea party moved to my own living room, and I started making thumbprint cookies to serve with the tea.

Tea Party Invitation, Carol Crump Bryner, 2008

Tea Party Collage

Thumbprint cookies are best, I think, with a dollop of raspberry jam, but any kind of jam or jelly will do – even a chocolate “Kiss.” I like to use the recipe from the “Tasha Tudor Cookbook.” Thumbprint cookies are just the right size to fit onto the saucer of a Christmas teacup.

“Christmas Cup with Thumbprint Cookie,” Carol Crump Bryner, woodcut and collaged drawing