Fruit Cake Cookies

It’s bakemas 2020!

If it’s your first bakemas here, welcome. It is my annual mini-series in which I show you how to make a various Christmas themed baked goods – perfect if you want to impress your family and/or friends or if you’re hosting a festive get together

Kicking today off with a super simple and straight forward recipe for a batch of fruit cake cookies!

Christmas wouldn’t quite be the same without cookies… Maybe it’s just me but who wouldn’t like cookies at Christmas? These cookies are a little different as they are spiced with baking spices and studded with dried fruit to attempt to recreate a fruit cake in cookie form.

I like these cookies as they have a crispy or more chewy edge and a softer centre, which is how cookies should be – no debate about it!

I love the use fruit and spices in this recipe, it makes the cookies feel slightly more festive, like you know Christmas is just around the corner. If you want to make these ahead of time, you can.

You can make the dough ahead of time by about 2-3 days – this gives the dough time to mature and develop (allowing a stronger flavour to develop) or if you want to make and bake the cookies off, you can then wrap the baked cookies in clingfilm or a container and freeze until you need them (cookies and cookie dough freeze very well).

Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?

 

Ingredients:

75g Butter.

75g Granulated sugar.

75g Light brown sugar.

1 Egg.

1/2 tsp Vanilla extract.

175g Plain flour.

1/2 tsp Baking powder.

1 tsp Ground cinnamon.

1/2 tsp Ground ginger.

Dash of ground nutmeg, ground all spice, ground mixed spice and ground cloves.

Pinch of salt.

 

100g Mixed dried fruit.

Additional fruit and glacé cherry halves for the decoration.

 

Method:

Before you get start on the recipe, you’ll want to do some prep work. Weigh up all of the ingredients, line a baking tray with parchment paper and grab any equipment you may need such a hand mixer (and bowl) or a stand mixer and spatula. Preheat your oven to 180˚c/350˚f.

Take a mixing bowl and place in the butter, granulated sugar and light brown sugar and beat them all together until they are lighter and fluffier in colour and consistency.

Don’t forget to give the bowl a good scraping down, just to incorporate any bits that may not have been fully incorporated.

Then you can add in the egg and vanilla extract and mix until they have been fully incorporated. You will notice the mixture changes very quickly in consistency and this is because of the amount of moisture you’ve added, if it looks a little scrambled, don’t worry.

Take a sieve and pass through the flour, salt, baking powder and ground spices. This is just to remove any lumps that may be in the dry mix as sometimes dry ingredients can be prolific for clumping together.

The next step is to take the bowl and give it all a good scraping down, just to incorporate any bits that may not have been fully worked in. Then you can transfer the cookie dough into a small bowl cover with clingfilm and place into the fridge to firm up and enhance the flavours (you can use the dough straight away if you’d like to).

Grab your bowl of cookie dough, a cookie scoop and your lined baking tray. Start to scoop up your dough for the cookie, I personally use 2 scoops of dough per cookie (this gives the perfect size cookie). Round the two scoops of dough together into a smooth ball, then place on the baking tray, allowing space around each ball of dough as they spread while baking.

Once you have a tray of cookie dough, you can then place it into the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes or until they have spread out and have become golden brown with a slightly darker brown edge.

Remove from the oven and finish the cookies off. Take half a glacé cherry and top each cookie with a half and use a few raisins/currants/sultanas.

Allow to cool and enjoy with a glass of milk.

That’s all for today guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back soon with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my other social’s – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The YouTube tutorial will be linked down below.