Fruit Cake...Cookies?
Does this make me a grandma?
How is it mid-November already? I feel like it was just summer and then I blinked and now i’m panicking over Christmas gifts and am extremely behind in making my yearly fruitcake.
Two fun fact about me. 1. I don’t really care about Thanksgiving. 2. My mother is British (see fact 1). Since Christmas was really THE holiday in our family, most of my food memories are grounded in British food this time of year.
Sue Miller (my mum) instilled in me from a very young age that the holidays were not complete without some form of baked and boozy fruit. Think minced pies, eccles cakes, fruit & nut loaves and, of course, the annual fruit cake. Truth be told I used to scoff at the idea of consuming anything remotely along these lines and still find most of these english “granny bakes” to be dry, too boozy or just overall odd texturally. That however does not stop my mother from filling a suitcase with Marks & Spencer’s glacé cherries, mixed peel and an assortment of other dried fruits every year and gleefully handing them over to me in the hopes that I deliver her a marzipan covered fruitcake (preferably in a tin) on Christmas eve. I have admittedly been procrastinating making this years fruit cake for a bit too long (I normally make them in October so they have 2-3 months of boozy “feedings” — I know, ew). But, I have started thinking about it so that has to count for something right?
While prepping to wrap my head around the project this year, I pulled out all my dried fruit and nuts and…I was shocked, honey. Between my mums hauls from the UK and one-too-many food styling shoots that have required dried something-or-others, I am swimming in it people — dried pineapple from a video shoot, leftover apricots from a cookie hang with Sara Tane, several bags from charcuterie boards past and candied ginger from that one time I had that one idea that I promptly forgot about. All this to say, it was time to play with some cookies.
I wanted a cookie that was a cross between an english fruitcake and those delish fruit and nut crispy, so I decided on a slice and bake vibe. I used an assortment of golden raisins, glacé cherries, mixed peel, candied ginger + toasted pecans but this is really a choose your own adventure vibe.
In a past life, I used to help come up with ice cream flavors at coolhaus ice cream and we had this awesome fruitcake flavor that got me thinking about incorporating more toasty milk notes into the cookies. So, I opted to toasting some milk powder up and adding it in with the flour and almond meal and let me tell you, I think it worked pretty well! Fun fact: you can do this for pretty much any cookie so get experimental people!
The result is a cookie that’s packed with cloves, black pepper (yes) and not-too-boozy fruit. It’s shortbread-like in the middle with sticky fruit and crispy on the edges — the perfect cookie to get you in the season without the commitment of “feeding” a cake for 3 months. ur welcome.
Do you have specific dessert that just feel like the holidays to you?
More to come this week as I know I skipped last week — I’m sorry, okay?
xoxo,
Your Cookie Gal
P.S. Other cookies I ate and/or am thinking about this week:
The new oatmeal raisin cookie from petitgrain boulangerie — no notes
Helms bakery in culver city just opened and they have a Chipless cookie that I am very intrigued by but did not try since the line was too long
I have been playing with a Banana/Choc Chip/Hazelnut/Brown Butter/Spelt cookie that is really changing my life — more to come here
Still working the Passionfruit Milk Chocolate Jaffa Cakes I told y’all about. They are so close people.
P.P.S. If you need a dinner roll recipe for next week, I developed one for my friends over at Field Co here. PLUS everything on their site it 20% OFF rn.
That’s enough of that. Let’s get to the recipe.
Christmas Fruit Cake Cookies
Makes: 18ish
