Dark Fruitcake Cookies. The flavour of a traditional molasses and spice dark fruitcake, translated into a crispy, chewy cookie. Even self professed fruitcake haters loved these!
Dark Fruitcake Cookies
My dark fruitcake adoring spouse proclaims this the best cookie she has ever eaten.
Here is another great cookie twist to celebrate the traditional Christmas fruitcake. My own recipe for a dark , richly flavoured, warmly spiced fruitcake is one of my favourite things at the holiday season. See that Old English Fruitcake recipe here.
Old English Fruitcake image with title text
I’ve incorporated all of the ingredients that I love from that recipe into these amazing fruitcake cookies.
I like to use both red and green glacé cherries for a more festive look.
If you are a fruitcake lover, you will simply adore these cookies. I taste tested these on about 40 people and even people who said they were not fond of fruitcake loved these cookies!
Dark Fruitcake Cookies
If you liked this recipe you may also like to try our un-spiced version of this cookie; Chewy Light Fruitcake Cookies.
Light Fruitcake Cookies
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Dark Fruitcake Cookies
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Originally published December 2011. Updated December 2019 to include a new printable recipe page and to add nutritional information.
Dark Fruitcake Cookies
Dark Fruitcake Cookies - the flavour of a traditional molasses and spice dark fruitcake, translated into a crispy, chewy cookie. Even fruitcake haters loved these!
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup soft room temperature butter
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 1 egg
- 2 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 cup chopped glace cherries
- 1/2 cup chopped dates
- 1/2 cup mixed glace citrus peel, or glace fruit mix
- 1/2 cup roughly chopped toasted pecans or walnuts, optional
Instructions
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix beat together the butter, brown sugar, white sugar and molasses until well blended.
- Beat in the egg for an additional minute
- Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger and fold into the molasses mixture. Fold in all of the fruit and nuts if you are using them. Cover, and chill dough for a couple of hours or overnight.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Roll dough into 1 sized balls.. Place cookies 2 1/2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets, lined with parchment paper or silicone baking liners. press down slightly with the bottom of a water glass. you can dip the water glass in a little flour to prevent it form sticking to the dough.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow to rest on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before transferring them to wire racks to cool.
- This dough freezes well, so you can roll them into balls and freeze them, then take them out of the freezer, let thaw for a 1/2 hour and bake as usual. They make take an extra 1 or 2 minutes in the oven this way but you can make a many or as few as you like
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Rock Recipes a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Our product recommendations are almost exclusively for those we currently use or have used in the past.
Nutrition Information
Yield
24Serving Size
24 cookiesAmount Per Serving Calories 181Total Fat 11gSaturated Fat 5gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 5gCholesterol 28mgSodium 216mgCarbohydrates 23gFiber 1gSugar 14gProtein 2g
Looks wonderful! I’ll make these tomorrow for my Christmas cookie tray. How many does the recipe make?
the cookies pictured look like they contain chopped walnuts, but they are not listed in ingredients…can they be added to the recipe?
Yes, that was a copy and paste error when I re-formatted the recipe. I’ve updated the recipe to include the nut option. Thanks for catching that.
Hi Barry, I made these wonderful cookies last year. Really loved them! This year as I’m mixing them up I notice in the directions it doesn’t say when to add the white sugar. I know enough that it would be creamed with butter, just wondering if you use it at all.I don’t remember what I did last year. Would appreciate your response! Thank You!!!
I’ve updated the recipe now. It is t be creamed in with the brown sugar.
Just tried your version of a similar recipe that I have been making for years. Guess who has a new Christmas recipe!! My oven must be running hot as my tester was done in 9 minutes. No sweat. Still was chewy, wonderful and great.
Glad you liked them!
I love fruitcake anytime of the year! Even though it’s almost the end of June, l’m going to make these cookies this evening after it cools off. I don’t have candied cherries but have everything else 😎
I made these and they are so good, but how do you store them? I put them in a tin and they got soggy and stuck together. I tried separating them with wax paper between layers but they are still soggy. Any suggestions?
Never had that issue. Perhaps they weren’t cooled enough?
These are delicious and taste like Christmas to me! I have added this recipe to my permanent “must bake” for the Christmas season, so thank you so much for sharing the recipe. 🙂 I might note that when I followed the recipe I ended up with approximately 4 dozen cookies…not 2 dozen as noted above. This is definitely not a complaint!!!
I mixed these last night and chilled the dough overnight. I just baked them and they turned out flat Wondering what I did wrong. They taste great but don’t look so good. 🤔
Sounds like a mismeasurement if you didn’t substitute anything.
Can you add rum to this recipe?
Can’t see how.
Can you add rum to this recipe if so how much? Thank you
I don’t think that would work.