Butter cookies with cherries & dried fruits

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These soft butter cookies can actually be done every day. They are made quickly and easily. Ideal if you want to bake an afternoon with the kids. Yet with their fun colors they immediately look festive and they no longer need decoration or icing.

The idea for these cookies came about when I had half a box of glacé cherries left over from making one Antillean cashew pie† We Antilleans stick to decorating cakes with these colored cherries. Something that was popular in the 70s, but you hardly see today. It just belongs to our cakes! Not only with the cashew pie, but also our plum pie and pistachio pies are decorated with it. So a real Caribbean quirk…

You buy the cherries in a small box at the supermarket. And although quite a few go on a cake, you always have half a box left. Once they open, they don't stay good for very long. So I thought it would be fun to use them in cookie dough. For these cookies I used about 100 grams of fruit. That's exactly how much is in such a box. So you can choose to use up the cherries especially for this recipe of butter cookies in one go.

So like I told you, I had half a box. I supplemented this with citron (in Italy you buy it in large pieces that you can chop yourself) and some dried apricots. What I mean by this: experiment with different dried and/or sugared fruits. As long as you use a total of 100 grams, you're good!

Fruits for the butter cookies

glazed cherries
citron
candied orange/lemon peel
dried apricots
dried plums
dates

This recipe will make about 30 cookies.

Ingredients:

225 gr butter
150 gr white caster sugar
8 gr (1 bag) vanilla sugar
1 egg yolk
280 gr flour
100 g fruits (see above)
pinch of salt

Preparation butter cookies with cherries

Mix the butter, sugar and vanilla sugar until creamy. Then add the egg yolk and mix until fully incorporated.

Cut the fruits into small pieces and add them to your mixture along with the flour and salt. Then knead the whole into a smooth, but firm cookie dough.

Is the dough too dry and falling apart into crumbs? Then also add the egg whites that you used. First half… and possibly the other half. Make a roll of about 25 cm from the dough.

Then wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for at least an hour to cool.

After resting, you can cut slices of about 5 mm from the dough with a sharp knife. Place it on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Then preheat the oven to 180 degrees and bake the butter cookies for about 16 minutes until golden brown. Finally, let them cool to room temperature on a wire rack.

You can store the butter cookies in an airtight container or container for about a week. - Enjoy your dinner!