Scottish Tea Cookies with Apple Butter
Updated Jul 01, 2025
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These Apple Butter Thumbprint Cookies, like our apple butter muffins, are the perfect fall dessert. Made with savory flavors and a hot oven, you can be dunking these in a hot cup of tea in just 30 minutes!
✅ Scottish Tea Cookies with Apple Butter🍎
🕒 Ready in: About 30 minutes (plus chill time)
🍪 Yields: About 3 dozen cookies
👨🍳 Skill Level: Beginner-friendly
📦 Equipment: Mixing bowls, cookie sheet, zip-top bag (for piping)
🍂 These soft, buttery cookies are filled with a dollop of rich apple butter for the perfect fall treat—like thumbprint cookies with an old-world twist.
🧈 Inspired by the Mennonite Community Cookbook and classic Scottish tea biscuits, this cozy recipe uses powdered sugar for a smooth, tender texture.
🍏 Apple butter takes center stage here—perfectly sweet, slightly spiced, and made to pair with a hot cup of tea.
🧊 Dough chills for an hour, then gets shaped into 1-inch balls, pressed flat, and filled with apple butter before baking until golden.
💡 Pro Tip: Use a zip-top bag to pipe the apple butter neatly into the center wells. Serve warm or cooled with your favorite fall beverage.
The perfect fall cookie, these cookies made with apple butter fit right in with our pecan pie cookies, my mom’s old fashioned molasses cookies, and these easy pecan sandies cookies.
A month or so back, a kind lady from Musselman’s emailed me and offered to send me a bottle of Musselman’s Apple Butter so that I could come up with a tasty new use for it.
I eagerly agreed to do my best and as a result of my own cravings and a little bit of creativity, these Scottish Tea Cookies with Apple Butter were born
I’m only beginning to appreciate apple butter. I grew up enjoying it although it seems it was only around after trips to visit family in Ontario, Canada which was a short two hour drive or so from my childhood home in the foothills of New York state’s Adirondack mountains.
To this day, I haven’t figured out why there seemed to be no local source of apple butter in those parts. As time goes on though I’m beginning so surmise it was a great excuse of my mom and dad to pay visits to their dear cousins who lived north of the border.
A few months back, we picked up some apple butter from a local farmer’s market and I put together this apple butter meatloaf which turned out really, really tasty. From that experience, I learned that apple butter is compatible with just about anything you can think of. Apple butter goes well with bread, meat, as a side, and as I found out with this recipe – cookies.
Aside from the jar of Mussleman’s apple butter that was sent to me, the Mennonite Community Cookbook, a standard kitchen “Bible” in our family, provided me with some further inspiration via its Scottish Tea Cookie recipe which I modified for these cookies.
As a sugar base, powdered sugar is used in these in lieu of the granulated form. This helps construct a soft yet firm cookie, almost biscuit-like in the old English sense.
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A dollop of apple butter is seated in a center well and the rest is… dreamy. Addictive. Delicious. And fall. Pick up some apple butter and make these. They are simple and they will make you smile and crave just one more. Happy fall. -Dan
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Scottish Tea Cookies with Apple Butter
Save This Recipe for Later (You’ll Want It Again)
Get this recipe sent to your inbox, plus a few of our best easy meals
⭐ Most readers end up making this in a few days.
Ingredients
- 1 cup shortening
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 4 eggs
- 3 cups flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 cup apple butter
Instructions
- Combine salt, sugar, shortening and butter.
- Add flour a bit at a time, working in like a pastry to a crumbly consistency.
- In separate bowl, beat eggs and and vanilla.
- Add egg mixture to flour mixture and mix till smooth.
- Chill dough in fridge for at least one hour.
- Shape chilled dough into balls 1 inch in diameter.
- Place dough balls on greased baking sheet about 2 inches apart and flatten with palm of hand.
- Use thumb to create well in center of each cookie.
- Place a few tablespoons of apple butter in small zip-lock bag.
- Snip corner of bag with scissors to create small opening.
- Squeeze apple butter into each well, filling slightly above level of dough.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes or until light brown in color.
Notes
-
🧊 Chill the Dough for Better Shape
Letting the dough rest in the fridge for at least an hour helps the cookies hold their form and prevents excessive spreading during baking. This step also improves the texture for a tender, biscuit-like crumb. -
🥄 Use a Zip-Top Bag for Neat Filling
For cleaner and more precise results, spoon the apple butter into a small zip-top bag and snip a corner. Pipe it into the thumbprint wells for a professional finish without the mess. -
🔥 Bake Until Just Lightly Golden
Keep an eye on the bottoms and edges of the cookies. They should be lightly browned. Overbaking can dry them out and take away from that soft, buttery bite that makes these cookies so special.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I haven’t used apple butter in a recipe other than putting apple butter on biscuits or toasted bread!! I would love to try the recipe you shared and others!! Thank you!!
Thanks for the comments, Tiffany. We’ve got more great apple butter recipes cooking, please be sure to check back!
We use it primarily as a spread for toast or biscuits, but they have an endless number of recipes that use apple butter on their site that I would like to try.
David, I can think of no better methods of enjoying apple butter. I’m happy to say too that we are diving in, head-first, to the delicious task of recipe development of apple butter delicacies. I hope you will check back soon to see some of the great things we are putting together!
hot fresh out of the oven rolls 😀
Peanut butter a d apple butter sandwiches 🙂
I love it on biscuits
Favorite way to eat Apple Butter……..on homemade bread or rolls!
Jody, I can think of no better way!
What a great way to use apple butter! I never would have thought of cookies. When my kids were young they loved it on toast made with homemade bread. I always loved it on quick breads like apple walnut bread & pumpkin bread. Yum!its also good when you sauté apple slices to go with pork roast or chops, mix some apple butter with it. I’d love to win-thanks for the chance.
Hi Deb, thanks for the comments. We have been using a lot of apple butter this fall and I just finished our second batch of making our own. Keep an eye out for our delicious and easy recipe of making apple butter as well as a couple more recipes that use it!
As always a wonderful read and fantastic recipe Dan. You are my Spotlight Blogger today with this recipe linked.
I wish I had your creativity Dan, what a brilliant use of Apple Butter!
I haven’t used apple butter in a really long time, so I hope I win! 🙂 Usually I would use it on bread though, just as a treat. I have a feeling I could have a lot of fun with it if I actually put my mind to it.
Good luck, Michelle and thanks for entering our giveaway!