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. I’ve incorporated all of the ingredients that I love from that recipe into these amazing fruitcake cookies.
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
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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
- 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
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In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix beat together the butter, brown sugar, white sugar and molasses until well blended.
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Beat in the egg for an additional minute
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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.
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
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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.
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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.
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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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Dee
December 19, 2011 at 7:16 pmLooks wonderful! I’ll make these tomorrow for my Christmas cookie tray. How many does the recipe make?
Diane n
December 12, 2015 at 7:16 pmthe cookies pictured look like they contain chopped walnuts, but they are not listed in ingredients…can they be added to the recipe?
Barry C. Parsons
December 14, 2015 at 10:13 amYes, 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.
Denise Rypma
December 13, 2016 at 7:10 pmHi 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!!!
Barry C. Parsons
December 14, 2016 at 3:49 pmI’ve updated the recipe now. It is t be creamed in with the brown sugar.
Gail
December 23, 2016 at 12:34 pmJust 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.
Barry C. Parsons
December 24, 2016 at 5:01 pmGlad you liked them!
Carolyn
June 23, 2017 at 5:53 pmI 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 😎
Karen
November 27, 2017 at 7:35 pmI 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?
Barry C. Parsons
December 5, 2017 at 8:08 amNever had that issue. Perhaps they weren’t cooled enough?
Theresa
December 2, 2018 at 8:16 pmThese 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!!!
Darlene
December 4, 2018 at 11:13 amI 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. 🤔
Barry C. Parsons
December 14, 2018 at 11:50 amSounds like a mismeasurement if you didn’t substitute anything.
Cathy Ruetten
December 4, 2018 at 6:34 pmCan you add rum to this recipe?
Barry C. Parsons
December 20, 2018 at 12:45 pmCan’t see how.
Cathy Ruetten
December 11, 2018 at 1:52 amCan you add rum to this recipe if so how much? Thank you
Barry C. Parsons
December 14, 2018 at 10:49 amI don’t think that would work.