apricot cookies

I love apricots - fresh as well as dried. In fact, I enjoy eating "stone fruits" such as apricots, peaches, nectarine, etc. These fruits are easily available in Perth, Australia during certain months at reasonable prices. These fruits, when sold fresh in Singapore, tend to be very pricey.
Not only do dried apricots make good snacks, they are also suitable to be added to cookies and cakes.

Instead of struggling to cut the dried apricot into bite-sized pieces using a knife, you can simply use a pair of scissors. The dried apricot may not look as even in size and shape if you were to cut it using a pair of scissors (as compared to a knife) but it does not matter. I have found that it is faster to cut the dried apricot using a pair of scissors.

Let me share a tip with you regarding baking cookies. Unless you are baking a cookie that is intended to melt in your mouth, the secret to a crunchy cookie is corn flour. Some cookie recipes that you may come across may not include corn flour. However, you can always substitute some of the plain flour with corn flour. Naturally, the more corn flour you add, the more crunchy the cookie. However, be careful not to add so much of corn flour that your cookie becomes rock hard.

The other thing that I have learned from experience is that even if you were to use the same cookie recipe to make two types of cookies, you may end up with one crunchy cookie and one chewy cookie. It therefore depends on the type of main ingredient that you use. For example, if you were to adapt the apricot cookie recipe (in this post) by using cream cheese instead of dried apricots as the main ingredient, you will end up with a chewy cookie, despite the inclusion of corn flour. If, however, you were to add grated cheese instead of cream cheese, your cookie texture is crunchy.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups plain flour

1/4 cup corn flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup butter (softened)

1/2 cup castor sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 cup ground almond

2 cups chopped dried apricots

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.

2. Sift the plain flour, corn flour and bicarbonate of soda. Add the salt and mix well.

3. Cream the butter, castor sugar, brown sugar and vanilla essence till light and fluffy.

4. Add the eggs, 1 at a time. Beat well.

5. Add the ground cinnamon and ground almond and mix well.

6. Stir in the chopped apricots.

7. Fold in the flour and salt mixture.

8. Drop by teaspoonful onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.

9. Bake at 20 minutes or until golden brown.

10. Cool the cookies thoroughly before storing in an air-tight container.

TIPS

1. You can either line the baking tray with aluminium foil or baking paper. I prefer to use Glad Bake.

2. If you do not like the taste of butter, you can substitute with margarine. However, I have found that the use of butter makes the cookie more flavourful.