Ingredients:
1 cup flour PLUS 1/4 cup (divided use)
3 cups fruitcake mix candied fruit (a mix of candied cherries, pineapple, citron, lemon peel, and orange peel)
3/4 cup coarsely chopped pecans
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoon orange zest or dried orange peel
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoon cognac
pinch salt
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour a 13×9 inch pan. Set aside.
In a small bowl, toss together the 1/4 cup flour with the fruit and nuts to coat. Set aside.
In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until well combined. Beat in egg then mix in the remaining 1 cup flour, spices, baking powder, and salt with a hand or stand mixer. Fold in the fruit/nut mixture. Spread the thick dough in an even layer in pan.
Bake 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely, in pan on a wire rack, about 1 hour.
Cut into 24 bars. (3×8)
My thoughts:
I actually made these last year so close to Christmas, I just took some pictures and wrote up the recipe to save for this year. I try not to post seasonal recipes too close to the holiday so you actually have time to buy the ingredients and make the recipe. I don’t assume most people have fruit cake mix candied fruit at their fingertips!
This time last year I was reading Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I Loved Before trilogy when they finally came available to download from the library after the popularity of the Netflix movie that summer. The main character, Lara Jean bakes a lot in the books and in one book her friend Peter was very insistent that she make fruitcake cookies. I honestly had never heard of fruitcake cookies before but I had a ton of candied fruit leftover from developing recipes for a client and thought why not give it a try? They seemed perfect for the season. There were very few details of what these cookies were actually like in the book so I started from scratch.
I wanted to give cookies to my neighbors so I thought bar cookies might be easier to than a rolled or drop cookies (Jenny Han really needs to start including recipes in her books) for the yield I wanted and to ensure that each bite had a good chunk of fruit and/or nuts in it. Plus they look so pretty all sliced up!
These bars are very fruit and nut packed and have all of the rich flavors of fruitcake but hopefully none of the negative associations regular fruitcake has acquired. They are very much a cookie in texture. Don’t skip the coating the fruit and nuts in flour step–this ensures that they don’t stick together, evenly distribute in the dough and don’t sink to the bottom while baking.
Everyone who had these loved them! Even people who didn’t think they liked fruitcake went back for me.
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