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So first thing to do in this recipe is gather the ingredients!

The cookie dough itself only calls for four ingredients: One cup (or two sticks/blocks or half a pound or 225 grams) of butter or margarine, one egg, two cups (or 473ml) of flour, and one 4-serving package of instant chocolate pudding mix.  You will also need 1/2 cup (or.. about 120 grams?) of chocolate chips, some sugar, some jelly, and about an extra tablespoon of butter or margarine (not pictured yet).

Got all those things?  Good!  Because now it's time to mix!

Start by mixing the cup of butter and the package of pudding mix.  Then beat in the egg.  

Pro tip: if you are not an expert at cracking eggs, don't try to do it one handed to be fancy. You will end up with egg everywhere and eggshell in your dough that you have to pick out later and just a lot of sadness.  Don't live dangerously.  Crack your egg with two hands.

Once those three are all mixed up, it's time to add the flour!  I usually add it a bit at a time to avoid the dreaded flour cloud that makes your lungs hurt.

Once it's mixed up, it should look something like this:

Woo, dough!  It should be kind of sticky, because you're going to be rolling it into balls next.

But first!  This is the perfect time to pre-heat the oven!  The cookies will eventually need to bake at 325 degrees fahrenheit.  That's about 163 degrees celsius, for people who don't use fahrenheit at all (unlike me who uses celsius until water boils and then fahrenheit above that).

Okay now that the oven's heating up, take your cookie dough over to a counter where you have lots of space.  Grease a cookie sheet or two (probably two).

Also, put some sugar into a small bowl.  You will need it for this next part.  My paper recipe says a quarter cup but I just took about two scoopfuls from my sugar container.  This isn't a precise measurement, you just need enough to roll balls of cookie dough in it.

Yep, the next step is to roll out balls of cookie dough.  I make them somewhere between an inch and an inch and a half in diameter.  Or for my fellow Canadians, about a centimeter smaller than a tim bit.  If you're not from Canada and don't use inches, make them about 3cm in diameter, give or take.

Now you roll the balls of cookie dough in the sugar.  Make sure they're fully coated.

Put those sugar-coated rolled cookies onto a cookie sheet (or two.  probably two.)  The recipe makes between three and four dozen cookies.  Unless you made the dough balls the size of tim bits, then it would make less, but I don't recommend making them that big.

Put them in the oven for five minutes.  This is the perfect time to throw the mixing bowl and other dishes you've used so far in the sink to soak.

But wait!  You say.  These are supposed to be thumbprint cookies!

Well, they're actually index finger print cookies. (also that shot of my hand might be the closest you get to a selfie on this blog).  After five minutes is when you add the indentations.  They're already kind of hot, so if you've got sensitive hands, you can also use a small spoon to press in the centres of each cookie.

Some of them might split down the side a bit.  That's okay.  Once you've indented all the cookies, put them back into the oven for another ten to fifteen minutes.  I erred on the side of ten minutes, since they'll still bake a bit on the cookie sheet after you take them out, and you don't take them off the cookie sheet right away.

Now, get the jelly you had before (it can be any kind of jelly, but preferably a kind that goes well with chocolate.  I used raspberry) and put a little in the indentation of each cookie.  If you have any spoons that are made for small children, one of those is kind of the perfect amount of jelly per cookie.  Otherwise, just be patient and estimate how much jam will fill each indentation.

Optionally, you could use pieces of maraschino cherry for this step.  That would probably also be delicious.

Now, for the chocolate chips that I've been neglecting this whole time.

You can do this on a double boiler if you know how to set up a double boiler and/or have one.  But I said "fuck the double boiler method I'm microwaving this chocolate."

Take about half a cup of chocolate chips and roughly one tablespoon of butter or margarine (I used a soup spoon since mine are about a tablespoon sized), and put that stuff into a microwave safe bowl! Microwave it for no more than 30 seconds, then stir it up. If it's still a bit lumpy put it in for another 10 seconds or so.  Once it's smooth, the fun begins!

...or you could melt it on a double boiler, but that is not living dangerously.

You may also want to increase the amount of butter/margarine depending on how you want to get this chocolate onto your cookies.  If you're drizzling it with a spoon or something you might want 2 tablespoons.  The recipe I have actually calls for three tablespoons but I tried that once and it made chocolate soup and a huge mess.  Still tasted good, but I would not recommend it.

ANYWAY.  This is my method for chocolateing up the cookies.  I take a confectioner's piping bag and a medium sized round tip (the one I used today was a #5) and I pipe the melty chocolate onto the cookies like it's icing.

If you don't have a confectioner's bag, you can use a freezer bag and just cut the smallest hole you can in one corner.  Or you can add extra butter so it's more liquidy and just drizzle it with a spoon.  I just like making zigzag designs.

Look at those fancy zig-zags.  

If you wanted, you could probably switch the milk/dark/semisweet chocolate chips for white chocolate and that would probably look pretty awesome and taste pretty good too.

Anyway once your chocolate is drizzled onto the cookies to your liking, let the cookies cool for a while.