Fruitcake Cookies

Did you forget to make a fruitcake back in the middle of November when you're supposed to in order for the cake to have time to properly soak up spirits and mature into the moist, delicious treat that fruitcake can be? I did, as I do every year.

But there is still time to make fruitcake cookies!

I stumbled upon the amazing idea of making fruitcake cookies over at the King Arthur Flour blog, Baking Banter. If you enjoy baking and have never seen this blog, you really need to check it out. I've actually banned Baking Banter from my RSS feed, because everything they bake makes me drool. Instead, I've stuck the blog over in my bookmarks where I only check it every month or two, you know, so I don't get so inspired to bake everything they post.To make fruitcake cookies you're just using the same batter as fruitcake, but, instead of baking it in a loaf or bundt pan, you're baking the batter in cookie form. So, if you already have a tried-and-true fruitcake recipe you love, just use that recipe.

I decided to stick to the recipe on King Arthur Flour's baking blog, which calls for nuts and mostly naturally dried fruit, with the exception of candied cherries. Their reasoning for keeping the candied cherries is that they are the least offensive taste-wise of the traditional fruitcake candied fruits, plus they're just so colorful and would be missed by those who truly love fruitcake. I totally agree.Did I just say I stuck to the recipe? OK, I did change it up a bit, but I think it's for the better. After baking the cookies, I tasted them and they tasted fine, but were missing something. A soaking in spirits! The soaking and curing in spirits (usually port, sherry, brandy, bourbon, or rum; or any combination of these) is what really takes fruitcake to a higher level and makes it so moist and yummy. Also, I didn't add the espresso powder the recipe called for, because coffee just doesn't say fruitcake to me.

After the cookies were cooled, I brushed port on the top of the cookies, then flipped them over and brushed the bottoms of the cookies with port. For good measure, I brushed the tops again with port. Oh my goodness! These were fabulous. And I really love the cookie form, which is great for taking to holiday parties. Also, I bet fruitcake haters would snatch these up not knowing they are fruitcake and declare them delicious. I don't know how many fruitcake haters I've converted over the years, but it brings me such joy.
Fruitcake Cookies
adapted from Baking Banter
makes 40-50 cookies

1/2 cup butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs
1/4 cup bourbon, rum, or brandy
1/4 cup apple cider or apple juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
9 cups chopped dried fruit and nuts (I used equal portions of pecans, raisins, dried cranberries, apricots, dates, dried pineapple, and candied cherries.)
3/4 cup port (or other liquor of choice)

• In a large bowl, beat together butter, light brown sugar, salt, and baking powder.
  
• Add eggs to mixture, and beat until smooth and creamy.
• Add 1/4 cup bourbon or other spirit, and 1/4 cup apple cider, and beat until combined.
• Add cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and flour, and beat until combined.
• Stir into the batter all of the chopped dried fruits and nuts.
• Spoon balls of dough about the size of a golf ball onto buttered or parchment lined baking sheets, leaving about 1 to 1 1/2 inches of space between the dough.
• Bake in a pre-heated 325 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, or until cookies are set and bottoms are light brown.
• Remove from baking pans, and cool on a baking rack for 10 minutes.
  
• When cookies are cool, brush tops and bottoms of cookies with port or liquor of choice.
  
• Cookies can be stored in an air-tight container at room temperature for a couple of months, or even longer in the freezer.
  

Cookie Link Dump

Got together with some friends this weekend to bake cookies for the holidays, and other than the traditional sugar cookies sprinkled with colored sugar crystals that I make every year, I was drawing a blank on what other cookies to make. A shout-out on Twitter for cookie ideas, a peek in my on-line bookmark folder, and a poke around the internet (my cookbooks now live in Philly while I'm still in Wilmington, so couldn't look in those) proved fruitful.

Coconut Macaroon Bars, Caramel Stuffed Apple Cider Cookies (these look so interesting) , Jan Hagels (a Dutch cookie), Chocolate Thumbprints, Chocolate Chip Cookies (The NY Times 36-hour-rested-dough internet sensation) and Mandelbrot all came in as suggestions on my Twitter feed.

Baker E's fabulous cookies can be purchased at A Full Plate Cafe, Home Slice Pizzeria, and Green Aisle Grocery, but if you mine her blog, Foodaphilia, you'll stumble on a recipe for one of her favorite holiday cookies, Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies, and everyone's favorite, Coconut Almond Toffee Crunch Cookies.

Last year Gourmet rounded up their favorite cookies from seven decades of publication - quite a few of these recipes got bookmarked.

Traditional Christmas Cookie Recipes from Martha Stewart - warning: a video plays automatically.

A Gallery of Holiday Cookies over at Chow.

25 Days of Christmas Cookies over at Epicurious.

A thread on Serious Eats asks, "What kind of candy or cookies do you make for Christmas?" - Lots of good ideas here.

50 Best Cookie Recipes on the Internet - a list from a few years ago, but still a good list.

Tips for freezing holiday cookies over at the kitchn - because you really shouldn't eat them all at once.

Tastebooks For Everyone

photo: Tastebook

Now that Christmas has come and gone, I can tell you about what I got my family for the holidays. Cookbooks filled with family recipes!

I used Tastebook to compile my own family recipes online, and had them printed in an (almost) professional quality collection. You can also make a cookbook super-quick by searching over 100,000 recipes from some of Tastebook's partners -- like Epicurious and Bon Appétit -- or buy premade recipe collections (kinda lame, since it's so easy to make your own), or even share your personal recipes online. Tastebook has great videos on how it all works, but I'll run through some things and give opinions on the whole deal.

First, I'll say that using Tastebook is easy. If for any reason you should use Tastebook, it's because it's easy.

I started editing a butt-load of family recipes my Dad sent me a couple of years ago, in the hopes of one day presenting a printed cookbook to my family. Originally, I was going to use Lulu, an online publisher, but after painstakingly editing the recipes (my Dad makes some crazy-ass sentences), I tried to upload to Lulu, and got some error/incompatibility message. Being the computer tard I am, I said, "Oh, hell no. I ain't dealing with that shit."

Tastebook was launched after I started my recipe editing project, and I had bookmarked it as a possibility, so just jumped over there and shortly found myself cutting and pasting the recipes into Tastebook's templates. Lord love the template. So Easy.

There are sections in the template to put a title, story or lead-in, ingredient list, cooking directions, yields, prep time, total time, tags, notes, and even upload a picture. I didn't use all of these sections, but, I'll reiterate, usage is easy.

When you're ready to have the book printed (holds up to 100 recipes, but you can buy 100, 50, or 25 recipes, and receive credits for future recipes if you have less than the number you ordered printed), you pick a cover (can't upload a personal picture for this), title your masterpiece, and they ship it to you in about two weeks after you place the order.For the holidays, you get a cookbook neatly wrapped in matte paper with a sticker on the outside saying "Specially prepared for [ the name of the person who made the cookbook ] deliciously yours, Tastebook." That's sweet, but I'm giving these as gifts to other people, and it looks like it's a gift to me. This sticker can be carefully peeled off with little to no ripping of the wrapping, though, and there's a peel-and-press strip on the underside of the wrapping flap for you to secure the flap.
And here's the book out of the wrapper. I chose the cover photo from their stock photo options (they seem to constantly add more...and some go missing if they're out of stock), the name of the book (so original!), the font color, and the spine color. What you can't see from the picture is that the rectangular cover title and spine title are not actually part of the book, but stuck on. In person, the cover title is not that obviously stuck on, but the spine title is. A little cheap, but that's how they can produce tons of these things and make it "personalized."
This is the back of the book. I'm not fond of Tastebook's blabbering self-promotion and random photos on the back cover that have nothing to do with my cookbook . There's also a tiny tastebook.com plastered at the bottom of each recipe page, but I guess that's the price you pay for creating a cookbook so easily.
Your recipes are bundled together with a little letter explaining how you have to put the recipes in their respective tabbed chapters. You cannot upload a personal photo for the tabbed section dividers. Options are nice, and I thought I wanted this option, but it was nice to have their photos...because I just don't have any great pics of fish!
Here's where your uploaded personal photos can go -- on your recipe page. The recipe pages are glossy, and the printing is nice.
There's one of these measurement equivalent pages, too.

And that's it! My experience with Tastebook was easy and pleasurable, and the cookbooks look nice. I'm not fond of Tastebook's branding throughout the book, but if you've got a slew of recipes you've been meaning to compile in a book, but the task is too daunting, try Tastebook. It still took me a year to compile the book -- a recipe here, a recipe there, no recipes in the summer -- but it's done!

Moravian Molasses Cookies

Pies are so last week! With Christmas around the corner, it's time to bake cookies. I thought I'd break out a cookie recipe I usually bake at Christmas, but have, for no good reason, retired for the past few years.

Coming from the culinary traditions of members of the Moravian church in Pennsylvania that settled in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina in 1753, these spicy Moravian molasses cookies are a traditional Christmas cookie. You may be familiar with them if you've ever received a gift basket with a tube of these delicately thin cookies made by the Salem Baking Company.

Moravian molasses cookies are basically an ultra-thin and crispy, ramped up ginger bread cookie. And they're too good to be retired.Baking notes:

• Unable to find a scallop-edged cookie cutter to replicate the classic Moravian molasses cookie shape, I've been using a tee-tiny tart pan for many years now. Make any shape you wish, though.
• The thinner you roll the cookie dough (try for at least 1/8-inch), the crisper the cookie will be. The longer you bake the cookies (but don't burn them), the crisper the cookie will be. You're aiming for thin and crispy. About half of mine end up crispy on the edges, and a tad chewy in the middle. I'm not perfect. And the chewy cookies are just as tasty.
  
• It is possible to roll the dough thinner by rolling smaller portions of the dough between plastic wrap, but it is nearly impossible to transfer the cookie to the baking sheet without ripping the dough. Try it if you're fabulous.
  

Moravian Molasses Cookies
makes about 40 cookies

1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup molasses
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

• Sift together flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, and baking soda in a bowl.
  
• In a large bowl, add molasses, vegetable shortening, brown sugar, and vanilla, and mix with an electric mixer until incorporated.
• Gradually add flour mixture to molasses mixture, then knead until thoroughly incorporated.
• Wrap dough in platic wrap and refrigerate for at least three hours, or overnight.
• Remove dough from refigerator, unwrap, and roll out as thin as possible (at least 1/8-inch thickness) on a floured surface, picking up dough and adding more flour to surface to prevent sticking when needed.
• Cut cookies and place 1-inch apart on a greased baking sheet (a spatula is really going to help you lift the cookies and transfer them to the baking sheet).
  
• Bake in a preheated 300 degree oven for 6-8 minutes, one sheet at a time.
  

Food Not-Gifts

I'm back. I hope everyone's holidays were just as lovely as mine. Here are my favorite food related holiday gifts that weren't actually gifts under the tree (too many of those to list):

• My Dad thought I should start a vintage food tin collection to dust, since my childhood chore was dusting his extensive collections (I despise dusting). He started me off with a Log Cabin tin from the 50's (?) with syrup still in the can, an imitation black pepper tin from WWII or earlier (?) with imitation pepper still in the tin, and a mustard tin that was empty.

• I gifted myself with a supply of Duke's mayonnaise for 2008.

• My sister surprised me with a Piggly Wiggly canvas shopping bag after a run to the store. I returned later to get my new work uniform – a Piggly Wiggly sweatshirt.

• Our waitress at the Waffle House in N.C. we stopped in for lunch on the way home gave us a handwritten Christmas card with our bill. I can't imagine hand writing cards for every customer – the hand cramps!

• Not pictured, but I got Pilsbury cinnamon rolls for breakfast!

Santa's Diet Plan

I’m going home for Christmas, so won’t be around for a while. I leave you with one of my guilty pleasures, and Christmas memories.

About twice a year I break down and buy a roll of Pilsbury cinnamon rolls from the refrigerated case in the grocery store. I love these things. Probably more than your homemade cinnamon rolls or the corner bakery’s cinnamon rolls – which are vastly superior, but I don’t care.

I delight in pressing the edges of the cardboard seams after ripping the paper off the tube, and popping the package open with a bang. I like actions with amusing and rewarding results. Similarly, I enjoy popping champagne open. (Ooh, gotta try the two together!)

I inherited a vicious sweet tooth from my mother and my granddad, so when the rolls are baked, you better believe that every ounce of the icing gets slathered on the hot rolls. I then eat the entire pan. Maaaybe one or two gets saved for later. (Do you think the reduced fat variety I buy helps?)

So, where’s the Christmas connection?

On Chrismas morning, after all of us kids plundered the toys Santa left for us, my mom, too tired from staying up and putting all the toys together to make an extravagant breakfast, would pull Pilsbury cinnamon rolls from the oven and serve them with hot chocolate. I think I looked forward to the cinnamon rolls just as much as I did the presents.

The Pilsbury cinnamon rolls only played a part in the Christmases when we were little. I guess after we figured out the truth about Santa (I was the last in the know), Santa didn’t have to work so hard, so could make a real breakfast.

What that real breakfast was, I don't know. I have no recollection of any other Christmas breakfast. (I also have no recollection of any Christmas, period, during high school. I'm not sure I was alive during high school.)

At any rate, I kinda wish we still ate Pilsbury cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast.

Christmas Crack

Trader Joe’s Candy Cane Joe-Joe's are dangerous. You only have a few options when confronting these Oreo, Thin Mints, and peppermint bark hybrids.

Abstinence
Yeah, right!

Moderation
Only for those with a very strong will and non-addictive personality.

Fiendish Hoarding
These cookies are seasonal. Stave off withdrawal symptoms by hoarding. Twelve to twenty boxes should do you until this time next year. (Buy hundreds if you are a street corner entrepreneur.)

This is the face of an addict. It could happen to any one.

White Fruitcake

As if my copious mayonnaise consumption weren’t proof enough that I’m a disgusting individual, I made fruitcake this past weekend. I’m one of the fifty people out there that actually likes fruitcake. In fact, I’ve been known to foster unwanted gift fruitcakes at my house.

My Dad also likes fruitcake. Ever since he’s discovered my blog (beware of links), he emails me occasionally with recipes or ideas. I’ve yet to follow through. Not that they aren’t lovely idea, it’s just that I don’t actually plan what I’m going to post. Posts just happen.

My secret ingredient: crystallized ginger.

The other day, he asks me if I have the prize-winning fruitcake recipe (not his recipe, someone else’s). Because it's prime time (maybe even a little late) to make fruitcake, if you want it ready for Christmas. Yep, I’ve got it. I was actually planning on making fruitcake last year, and a year later is about the perfect time to get around to doing things.

Blue ribbon be damned, I could not follow the recipe. It called for creaming butter and sugar for 15 minutes, and everyone knows I have no patience. And for giggles, I added crystallized ginger. I went with my Dad’s suggestion of using Sunmaid's Jumbo raisins – they’re huge! He just moved into a new house with a slow oven, and declares that slow and low is key. Mine was done in 2 ½ hours at 225°. We’ll compare notes at Christmas. (I hope I win.)

My camera got a bath after this shot.

And for those of you that bitch about fake fruit in fruitcakes…It’s candied, not fake. Get over it – or make one with only dried fruit. And if you still can’t get over it, send all shunned cakes to my house.

White Fruitcake
Adapted from Revised Version of Spices of Life Past and Present by Lee A. Harley, Sr.

20 ounces candied pineapple, cut into ¼ inch pieces
12 ounces candied cherries, cut in half
4 ounces jumbo raisins
8 ounces dates, chopped coarsely
2 ounces crystallized ginger, chopped finely
1 ½ cups pecans, chopped coarsely
1 cup walnuts, chopped coarsely
2 cups flour
¾ cup butter, (room temperature)
1 cup granulated sugar
5 eggs (room temperature)
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon mace
2 ounces sweet wine, (port or cream sherry)
brandy, rum or other spirits to add after the cake is baked

• Preheat oven to 225°.
• Mix fruit, ginger, and nuts in a large bowl, keeping a few pieces out for decorating the top of the cake.
• Sift flour, and mix about 1/3 cup flour in fruit and nut mixture until coated.
• Cream butter and sugar together in a small bowl and beat for 15 minutes, if you can stand it that long. I lasted 5 minutes.
• In another small bowl, beat eggs on high for 1 minute. Add the cinnamon and mace to the egg mixture.
• Add the creamed butter and sugar to the fruit and nut mixture, mixing well. Then add the egg mixture, mixing well. Then add the flour in three parts, mixing after each addition. Then add the sweet wine and mix. (It’s best to just reach in there and mix with your hands.)
• Fill a greased, or greased parchment-lined bundt pan (or a few smaller pans) with the batter, pressing down and smoothing out the batter. Decorate the top with nuts or fruit.
• Bake at 225° for 2-2 ½ hours, or until center of cake is done and straw inserted in middle of cake comes out clean.
• When completely cooled, unmold cake and wrap in foil for a week to cure. (Some add spirits after cooling, but I'm following the recipe sent to me, and will wait.)
• After a week of curing, sprinkle a few ounces of any combination of spirits (brandy, whiskey, port, rum, scotch, sherry) on top for the cake to absorb. Repeat, adding spirits every few days until the cake is moist throughout, or until you’re satisfied with the results.

A Tale Of Two Cookies

It’s not Christmas if I don’t make sugar cookies exactly as I did when I was a child. This means the exact recipe, rolling pin, cookie cutters, and sprinkles my mom used. Absolutely no frosting allowed!

One of my first cooking memories is of making Christmas sugar cookies with my mom - creaming the sinful combination of sugar and shortening in a bowl; rolling blonde, soft dough with a heavy wooden rolling pin, flouring green and red plastic cookie cutters shaped like candy canes, Santa Claus, and snowmen; pressing the cookie cutters into the dough – hopefully none stick, but some do; sprinkling green and red colored sugar crystals over the cookies and into the depressed patterns left by the cookie cutters; baking until the edges hint of gold; then eating warm, sugary cookies straight from the oven.

I found myself making rugelach the same day I made sugar cookies. I have no memories to share of rugelach, but I can share my recent experience of baking rugelach for Hanukkah. Rugelach is definitely fancier than the sugar cookie and the process is much more involved.

As I chilled the dough for eight hours; divided the dough into four; rolled the dough into perfectly thin rectangles; spread the rectangles with jam, raisins, walnuts, and cinnamon sugar; tightly rolled the dough up into logs, all the while taking the softened dough in and out of the refrigerator to chill, I wondered if this cookie was too difficult for a small child to make? Do people have fond memories of making rugelach as a child like I have of sugar cookies? At first I didn’t think I would put a small child to the task of making a cookie so involved, but then I countered that children enjoy copying and participating in their parent’s activities. If your mother made rugelach, you made rugelach along side her. And, of course, you have fond memories – it’s a cookie!