This is a recipe that has been on my to-make list for a very long time. I watched Ina Garten make
them on her Barefoot Contessa show and when Priya (@ Akshayapaatram) made
them egg-less and vegan on her blog, I had to absolutely had to make them. I even bought all the ingredients, but couldn’t find the much needed time to make them.
As the old saying goes, it’s better late than never, so this past weekend, I finally MADE these yummy cookies. I followed the original recipe to the T, I’m giving the same recipe here.
Adapted from Ina Garten’s Recipe.
Ingredients:
Dried fruit – 2 – 2 ½ cups (I used a combination of raisins, dried cherries/pineapple/papaya/prunes/apricots/figs & cashews)
Honey – 1tbsp
Dry Sherry – 2tbsp
Lemon juice – 2tbsp, freshly squeezed
Salt – pinch
All-purpose flour – 2 2/3 cups
Sugar – ½ cup
Light brown sugar – 1/3 cup
Butter – 2 sticks, unsalted and @ room temperature (I leave it out the night before)
Egg – 1 extra large
Ground cloves – ½ tsp
Method:
- Add honey, sherry, salt & lemon juice to dried fruit and nuts; cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit overnight at room temperature.
- Cream butter along with both sugars, ground cloves with hand mixer on medium speed, for about 3 minutes.
- Add egg and mix until incorporated.
- Slowly add the flour and ¼ tsp salt and mix until just combined; do not overmix.
- Add the fruits and nuts, along with any liquid in the bowl.
- Divide the dough in half and place each half on a parchment paper. This dough is very easy to work with and the recipe makes about 5-dozen cookies, so if you want to divide it into more than 2 logs for future use, go ahead and make 4 smaller logs. Roll each log in the parchment and refrigerate for 2 hours. Place all the logs that are not being used right away in a Ziploc bag and stow in the freezer (right now I’ve 3 logs waiting to be used).
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cut the log into ½” thick slices. Place them on a ungreased cookie pa ½” apart. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until lightly golden. My cookies were ready in 16-17 minutes, but the bottoms were slightly browned, so keep checking after 15 minutes.
These are sooooo good, buttery with the sweet and tangy bite from the dried fruit. I think I like them better than Karachi bakery fruit cookies. Thanks Priya for making me try these, they are worth every minute of the wait.
These cookies go to Mansi @ Fun & Food Blog for her
Sugar High Fridays-Fruit & Nut event.
I was thinking of doing a post like xplore Malabar cuisine, xperience Kerala sadya or something on those lines. I even asked Rajani for her input and she said try a sadya meal by making dishes over couple of days. I was tempted but the amount of work involved seemed too tedious and with the husband traveling, it was way too much food for just me. It is one of my dream meal to make in my lifetime.
