2021 – Christmas Cookies
Christmas Fruitcake Hermits
Original recipe from Canadian Living
Christmas Fruitcake Hermits
Ingredients
Cookies
- 113 grams Unsalted Butter - Room Temperature
- 46 grams Shortening - Room Temperature
- 213 grams Brown Sugar - Light
- 2 Eggs - Large - Room Temperature
- 1 tsp Rum Extract
- 338 grams Flour - All Purpose
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- 1 tsp Nutmeg
- 1 tsp Ground Ginger
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 200 grams Red Cherries - Candied (Glaćed), Quartered
- 200 grams Green Cherries - Candied (Glaćed), Quartered
- 150 grams Raisins
- 170 grams Citrus Peel - Lemon or Organge or Mixed
- 85 grams Pecans - Coarsly Chopped
- 84 Pecan Halves
Rum Glaze
- 150 grams Icing or Confectioners Sugar - Sifted
- 3 tbsp Amber Rum
Instructions
- In the bowl of a mixer, cream the butter, shortening and brown sugar until light and fluffy. This should take about 2 minutes with a pause or 2 for scraping the sides of the bowl. Mix in eggs 1 at a time until fully incorporated. Scrape down the bowl again and mix in the rum extract
- In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, baking soda and salt. Mix into the butter mixture in 3 additions. Scrape down the bowl again. Mix in cherries, raisins, citrus peel and chopped pecans. With a spatula, hand mix until all of the fruit is evenly distributed throughout the batter.
- Using a 15 ml scoop (1 tbsp), scoop onto a parchment lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Press 1 pecan half into each. Bake at 350° until bottoms are golden brown but centres are still soft - 14 to 16 minutes. Allow cookies to rest on the pan for 5 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely.
- Rum Glaze: in a bol, stir icing sugar with the rum until smooth. Drizzle about 2ml (1/2 tsp) over each cooled cookie. Let dry until set, 20 - 30 minutes.
- Store in a sealed container with waxed paper between each layer.
Bakers Notes:
- this is an excellent moist cookie that will store well and therefore ship well
- if you decide to bake and the store the cookies before glazing, be sure to put waxed paper between each layer to stop the cookies from sticking to each other
- the recipe yielded more than 84 cookies for me, so additional pecan halves were required
- this was my favourite recipe of the year – 2021
