Albertson's Original Fudge Thumbprint cookies

Original Albertson's Fudge-filled Thumbprint Cookie Recipe--Divided

In my mother's handwriting:

1/2 pound plus 1 ounce (I use 1 cup) brown sugar--packed

1/2 pound 6 ounces margarine (I just use 1 cup of butter)

1 pound 4 ounces shortening (2 cups)

1 teaspoon salt

2 pounds CAKE* flour * Has to be CAKE flour--do not use all purpose (I weigh it on my scale, as never can remember how many cups it is.)

Cream shortening and margarine until very creamy. Then add the brown sugar. Stir in the flour and salt. It is hard to get all of the flour stirred in, and will look like pie dough.

Divide the dough in four parts. Mix with your hands into a ball, then put it on a strip of waxed paper, and using your hands, form it into a long rounded strip like a tube of store bought cookie dough.

Put some chocolate sprinkles on the wax paper (You can use the multi colored ones if you like, or the little ball shaped ones, but if making the fudge filled cookies, we stick with chocolate ones. Roll the dough over the sprinkles. Wrap in the waxed paper and refrigerate until chilled.

Slice the dough about 1/4 inch thick and place on ungreased cookie sheet. You can put them fairly close together, as they do not spread very much. Press down with your clean thumb in the center of each cookie--or let a kid or grandkid do it. They love it! Bake at 350 degrees for around 8 minutes for a soft cookie. They don't need to brown. Let them cool, then frost them with a butter cream frosting--sorry, I don't really measure my frosting, but it is about a stick of softened butter, 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, box of powdered sugar and my own secret ingredient is a little almond favoring instead of vanilla, but you can use whatever Fudge Frosting you like. Seriously, I used to use the canned stuff, but my one grandson only likes the frosting listed above. I put it in a decorated bag and either pipe out a dab of fudge frosting or again, let a grandchild.

Sorry, I am not exactly certain how many cookies it makes--never worried about it. Maybe around 100? Better than 1,000 of them!

Mom's recipe says she got four rolls of dough, which you do. She has written that they are an easy cookie to make for a fancy cookie. :-)

These were my family's favorite store bought cookie. My husband just loved these, and my mom was happy to bring them home for him. We dated, then married in 1976. She sent them to us out of state until around 1980--then they changed the recipe, and they just weren't the same. Thank goodness I had asked my mom for the recipe, so we had it.