Brown-Butter Holiday Fruity Chipper Cookies
These buttery fruity chocolate chip cookies are inspired by my Grans Christmas Fruit Cookies. Her cookies had lots of red and green candied cherries, and candied fruitcake mix added to chocolate chip cookie dough. I've added brown butter, oatmeal and cereal to make these extra "healthy"...well *healthier! For a super fast version, use a package of chocolate chip cookie mix and add in the cherries, dates/candied fruit and cereal. This makes a large batch of nearly 30 cookies. I recommend freezing half to bake later! *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Equipment
- bowls
- Saucepan
- food processor/chopper - Optional, but will make chopping the oats and nuts much, much quicker!
Ingredients
- 1 stick butter Simmerred in a skillet until browned. I use salted.
- 2 eggs Lightly beaten in large bowl
- 4 tbsp milk
- 1½ tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ tsp lemon juice (helps poof them up and make them chewy)
- ¼ cup butter flavored Crisco While I prefer Butter-flavored Crisco, you can use more butter instead.
- 1 cup chocolate chips or chunks I use whatever chocolate I have. Like a mixture of milk and dark chocolate, Dove, Hershey, Private Selection chunks and/or Godiva chips. Or chop your own from bars.
- 1 cup pecans Or walnuts
- ¾ cup oats Chopped- some fine, some coarse.
- ½ cup brown sugar For sweeter cookies, add 2 additional tb brown sugar.
- 2 tbsp sugar For sweeter cookies, add 2 additional tb white sugar.
- ¾ cup Grape-Nuts cereal Shhh, it’s the secret ingredient! You can use Post Grape-Nuts, or a generic brand (sometimes called nutty-nuggets.) It makes these cookies mysterious, like there’s slightly crunchy butter toffee in them.
- 1½ cup flour I use half AP and half white whole wheat, or whatever I have.
- 2 tbsp flour Used when chopping the cherries.
- ¼ tsp salt Just a pinch if the butter is salted.
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ⅛ tsp nutmeg Just a few fresh gratings or a pinch of nutmeg
- ¼ tsp cinnamon I like Enspice Sri Lankan Cinnamon. Can be omitted.
- 8 oz candied cherries For holiday cookies, get one 8 oz container of red, and an 8oz container of green. Not maraschino, but candied cherries like these found in the baking aisle. *You can also add some fruitcake mix like this.
- 10 dates Pits removed, roughly chopped.
Instructions
- Add the stick of butter to a skillet and simmer until it starts to brown. This will take just a few minutes, stir occasionally. Once browned, remove from heat.
- Stir the Grape-Nuts into the browned butter and set aside to cool.
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Lightly whisk eggs, milk, and vanilla together.
- Add in lemon juice, both sugars and butter flavored Crisco. Stir and mix with a spatula until the largest chunks of Crisco or butter are smoothed out.
- Chop the nuts coarsely, remove half and add to your medium bowl. Continue to chop the remaining nuts until almost ground. Feel free to use a food processor or chopper, it will speed this up a lot! Add to the medium bowl.
- Chop the oats coarsely, remove half and add to your medium bowl. Again, a food processer will speed this up a lot! Continue to chop the remaining until finely chopped, almost like a course flour. Add to the medium bowl.
- Add all but the reserved 2 tbsp. of flour to your medium bowl.
- Add spices, a pinch of salt, baking powder and soda to the medium bowl.
- Add your reserved 2 tbsp. flour to your cutting board and add all but about 15 assorted candied cherries to it and lightly stir to separate them. (Set aside those extra cherries to decorate the tops of the cookies.)
- Chop the cherries carefully into halves or quarters and gently stir them into the dry ingredients.
- Chop the dates roughly so you have some large and some small pieces. If they get sticky, add a sprinkle of flour. Stir the dates into the dry ingredients.
- Set aside about half of the chocolate chips, whole. Chop the remaining chocolate into small bits, continue chopping some, to that you have a mix of small bits and finely chopped. Set aside. You'll have some that will melt into the dough, some whole chips and some small chips/chunks of chocolate throughout.
- Stir the brown butter Grape-Nuts mixture into your large bowl with your wet ingredients.
- Stir all the dry ingredients into your large bowl of wet ingredients.
- Add in all the chocolate and stir gently to combine.
- Chop the remaining cherries and use the pieces to decorate the tops of the cookies before baking.
- Drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto the cookie sheet and roll into balls. Add a few cherries to the top to decorate and press down lightly to flatten to a cookie shape, and to adhere the cherries to the tops.
- Bake in a 350° oven for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned and spring back gently when pressed.
Notes
I’m not usually a fan of heavily processed and preserved food, but candied cherries are an exception.
TIPS:
I have been known to cheat and quicken up this recipe by using a package of chocolate chip cookie mix and just adding in my cherries, dates, and cereal.
You don’t have to chop half the chocolate, but the smaller bits really distribute throughout the cookie, help soften the Grape-Nuts and keep these from getting too dense.
TIP: Make the dough and bake half, scoop out the rest into individual-sized balls and freeze them on a tray. Once frozen, put them in a zip-top bag or freezer container until ready to bake. I bake from frozen in a 350° oven for about twenty minutes or until nicely browned and they spring back when pressed gently with your finger or a spoon.
Join in the fun for the holidays, 2020, and enter a recipe into my First Annual Holiday Virtual Cookie Swap Contest on Facebook!
*I am not a nutritionist, but these cookies do have fiber and some nutrients than regular chocolate chip cookies don't usually have. I have used WordPress Recipe Maker to calculate the nutritional value.
Nutrition
Calories: 210kcalCarbohydrates: 26gProtein: 3gFat: 11gSaturated Fat: 4gCholesterol: 21mgSodium: 96mgPotassium: 125mgFiber: 2gSugar: 13gVitamin A: 181IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 27mgIron: 2mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!