Best Dried Fruit Nut Florentine Cookies Recipes

FLORENTINE COOKIES

Steps:

• Heat oven to 325 degrees. Combine honey, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook until the temperature reaches 238 degrees (the soft-ball stage) on a candy thermometer. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine nuts, dried fruit, flour, and spices.
• Pour honey-sugar mixture over contents in large bowl, stirring with a wooden spoon to combine. When cool enough to handle, form into 1-inch balls with hands coated with vegetable shortening to prevent sticking. Place on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat mat or parchment paper, and flatten into balls with the palm of your hand. Bake until bubbled on top, about 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack.
• Meanwhile, melt the chocolate: In the top of a double boiler or in a heat-proof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stir chocolate with a spatula until smooth. Working quickly, using a small offset spatula, spread a thick layer of chocolate on the back of each cooled cookie. Place cookies, chocolate side up, on a wire rack until chocolate is hardened. Store between layers of parchment paper in an airtight container.

MIXED FRUIT-AND-NUT COOKIES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
• Put butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until smooth. Add sugars, and mix until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs one at a time until combined; mix in vanilla.
• Reduce mixer speed to low. Add flour mixture and mix until just combined. Stir in coconut, apricots, dates, macadamias, and pistachios.
• Drop batter, 2 heaping tablespoons at a time, onto prepared baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Flatten slightly. Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven; transfer cookies on parchment paper to a wire rack to cool completely.

OATMEAL DRIED FRUIT COOKIES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C)
• In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then stir in the vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg, gradually stir into the creamed mixture. Finally, stir in the quick oats and dried fruit. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the unprepared cookie sheet.
• Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

FLORENTINES

Steps:

• Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Line a heavy large baking sheet with parchment paper. Stir the almonds, flour and zest in a medium bowl. Stir the sugar, butter, cream, and honey in a heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Bring the mixture to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the almond mixture. Cool the batter for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Using 2 teaspoons of batter for each cookie, spoon 8 mounds of the batter onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing evenly apart (the cookies will spread). Flatten the batter slightly with your finger.
• Bake the cookies until they are lacy and golden brown, about 10 minutes. Gently slide the parchment paper with the cookies onto a rack and cool completely. Transfer the cookies to paper towels. Repeat with the remaining batter, lining the baking sheets with clean parchment for each batch. (The cookies can be made up to this point 2 months ahead. Cool completely, then store airtight in the freezer. Defrost before continuing.)
• Stir the chocolate in a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water until the chocolate melts. Spread the melted chocolate over the bottom of 1 cookie. Top with a second cookie, bottom side down, pressing lightly to adhere. Repeat with the remaining cookies and chocolate.

LACE COOKIES (FLORENTINE COOKIES)

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with a silicone liner (such as Silpat®).
• Place almonds into the bowl of a food processor; alternate pulsing and running at full speed every few seconds until finely chopped and crumblike. Be careful not to go too far; you don't want them too fine and pasty.
• Combine butter, brown sugar, and honey in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir a few times and cook until melted and dissolved. Bring to a boil, then carefully remove from the heat.
• Add vanilla extract, salt, and flour, and whisk until smooth. Add chopped almonds and mix with a spatula until everything is combined.
• Drop eight uniformly sized, rounded spoonfuls of batter (each about 2 teaspoons, or 15 grams) onto the prepared sheet. Fine-tune the cookie shapes and make sure they are evenly spaced.
• Place in the center of the preheated oven and bake until golden brown and a bit darker around the outsides, 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through.
• Remove from the oven and slide the silicone liner off the baking sheet and directly onto the countertop. Allow to sit until cool and crisp, 3 to 5 minutes, then gently peel cookies off the liner. Repeat to bake remaining batches.
• Spread melted chocolate over the flat side of one cookie. Place a second cookie, flat-side down, on top to make a sandwich and press very gently to seal. Repeat to form remaining cookies. Let sit until chocolate has firmed up, about 30 minutes.

FLORENTINE COOKIES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375*F.
• Line a cookie sheet with a baking mat or non-stick foil.
• In a small saucepan, melt butter.
• Add brown sugar, oatmeal, flour and milk and bring to a boil.
• Cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.
• Remove from heat and add vanilla.
• Using a teaspoon (NOT TABLESPOON!), spoon out 5 teaspoons of cookie batter onto the cookie sheet in a zigzag pattern. You'll only be able to cook 5 cookies at a time, anymore and they will run together. The cookies will spread to 3-4 times their size when baking so they need plenty of room to spread.
• Bake for 5 minutes, then remove from the oven and let cool completely on the cookie sheet before removing from the pan to a cooling rack.
• This recipe works best with 3 or 4 cookie sheets going at a time so that the cookies can fully cool (about 10 minutes per pan) while others are in the oven.
• Once cookies are cool, store in an AIRTIGHT container.
• Humidity and moisture will soften these and make them chewy.
• They should be paper thin and crispy when fully cooled.

DRIED FRUIT-NUT FLORENTINE COOKIES

Steps:

• INSTRUCTIONS: For the pastry: Adjust rack in the center of oven; preheat oven to 350°. Set nearby a 10 1/2 x 15 1/2 x 1-inch jelly-roll pan. In a food processor bowl fitted with the steel blade, pulse the flour, sugar and salt to blend. Cut butter into 1/4-inch slices, scatter over the flour mixture and pulse with short on/off bursts just until a crumbly mass forms (similar to streusel). Scatter the dough over the pan and with fingertips press it together evenly to form the crust. (No need to press it up sides of pan.) Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, until set and pale gold on top. Don't turn off the oven. For the topping: In a small bowl, toss together the almonds, pistachios, ginger, orange peel and cranberries and set aside. Pour the cream, honey, corn syrup and sugars into a 1 1/2-quart heavy saucepan. Stir to combine, then add the butter. Stir over medium-low heat until the butter melts. Increase the heat to medium, and stir constantly with a wooden spoon or a silicon spatula (heat resistant to 500°) especially toward the end of cooking to prevent scorching. Cook just until the mixture reaches 235° (use a digital thermometer, if possible), about 8 to 10 minutes. The mixture will appear straw-colored. Remove from heat, and stir in nut-fruit mixture. Pour the thick, hot mixture on the partially baked pastry and spread it thinly. Bake for 7 minutes; then spread the now more liquid topping evenly over the pastry. Return to the oven and bake an additional 13 to 14 minutes, or until golden on top. Place the baking sheet on a wire rack to cool. When completely cool, cut 2-inch wide strips crosswise with a sharp-bladed knife to yield seven 2-by-10-inch strips. Cut across each strip diagonally in alternate directions to form triangular-shaped bars.