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Dinner with Rukmini
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Old-fashioned Fruit and Nut Cookies
Introduction from Rukmini Iyer
Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut bars are my parents’ favourite. Apparently my mother craved them when she was expecting me, and my father would go and buy her large bars as a treat – which might explain my incurable sweet tooth. These cookies are my homage to the bar for them.
Ingredients
Essential kit
You will need: a lined baking sheet and a wire rack.
Method
Prep time: 15 minutes + 1–2 hours chilling. Cook time: 12–15 minutes.
Stir the flour, baking powder, sea salt, chocolate chips or chunks, hazelnuts and raisins together in a large bowl.
In another bowl, whisk the sugar, olive oil and water until smooth and completely incorporated – this will take a little time with a hand whisk, less with an electric whisk.
Stir the liquid ingredients with the dry ingredients until they come together into a sticky dough, then transfer the mix to the fridge to chill for 1–2 hours.
Once the dough has chilled, use an ice cream scoop to measure out 12–15 cookies on to a lined baking sheet, then use your hands to quickly pat them into neat, flat discs, leaving some space around the edges as they will expand. (You can refrigerate them again for 30 minutes at this point, but I’m usually greedy and just get on with the baking.)
Preheat the oven to 155°C fan/175°C/gas 3; when at temperature, transfer your chilled or room temperature cookies to the oven and bake for 12–15 minutes. They will look and feel very soft, but don’t worry, this is what you want.
Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then carefully transfer them to a wire rack to cool a little more before eating.
Once completely cool, you can store these in an airtight container for 3–4 days, or freeze and defrost as needed.
FOR DIABETICS: Replace the sugar with 170ml date syrup, and use just one 100g bar of diabetic-friendly dark or milk chocolate, chopped into chunks.
FOR GLUTEN-FREE: Replace the plain flour with gluten-free plain flour.
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