Archway still makes a few big cookies with fruit in the middle, but apparently there are no grocery stores in Texas that still carries their brand. I was in the mood for a fruit cookie, so I decided to get into the kitchen and make some. Homemade is always better anyway.
The original recipe is below and it makes about 5 dozen cookies. Should you not like raisins, leave them out and add an extra 1/2 cup of nuts.
Glazed Apple Cookies
courtesy of Baltimore Sun-Nov 28, 2007
Ingredients/Cookies
1 cup chopped toasted nuts (pecans, walnuts)
1 cup chopped peeled apples
1 cup raisins
1 egg (room temp)
1/4 cup milk
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups flour
1/2 cup or 1 stick of butter (room temp)
1 1/3 cup brown sugar
Ingredients/Glaze
2 tbs and 1 1/2 tsp of milk
1 tbs butter (room temp)
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. There is no preparation needed on baking sheets. Cookies bake on sheets without any parchment or grease/butter.
With an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This should take about 3 minutes. Then beat the egg into the batter. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, sift together the dry ingredients ( baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour). Take a wooden spoon and stir dry ingredients into the batter. Once all dry ingredients are blended, mix in milk. Add the apples, nuts and raisins. Continue to mix with wooden spoon until all is evenly distributed.
Place heaping teaspoons of the batter on an ungreased baking sheet, spacing each cookie 1 inch apart from the others. Bake for 10-12 minutes, making sure that they do not get too dark in color. The cookies will be brown, but not as dark as a gingerbread cookie.
Once baked, remove and transfer cookies to a cooling rack. As they cool, place all the glaze ingredients listed above in a medium size bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until no lumps remain.
Take cooled cookies off of rack and place on wax paper. Then drizzle glaze over the top of the cookies and let set until glaze hardens. Once glaze is hard, you can store or serve.