The Great Cookie Research Project: The Boozy Blonde and Fruity One

This week's cookie was a special request from the Senior Tutor. He is one of my stalwart cookie tasters and when I asked him what he'd like to see in a future week he said that his favourite from the supermarket is white choc and raspberry. I didn't have a white choc chip cookie on my list of possibles so I liked that idea, and it also played into a vague yen I've had for a while to bake raspberries in brownies. In fact, I decided to go for dried fruit since the season has passed on from the fresh ones, and when I found a recipe on allrecipes for a booze-soaked dried cranberry cookie I just couldn't resist the chance to call this week's offering Boozy Blonde and Fruity :)


There was nothing too startling about the recipe so the real difference from other weeks was the white chocolate as opposed to milk or dark, and the dried fruit, which had been sitting in alcohol for a good 24 hours or so by the time I came to mix it all up. The recipe called for brandy but when I looked through our very random collection of alcohol I discovered that we were out. Not a good start. Must stock up before making the seasonal Solstice cake (we're all very non-denominational in this house). In fact the only remotely suitable alcohol was an elderly bottle of Tenerifian rum which The Scientist brought back from a research trip years ago. It's not exactly a top quality tipple and I passed on drinking the discarded soaking alcohol as the recipe cheekily suggests but I don't think it harmed the cookie at all.

Once again the mixture was very tasty (always my own personal test taste) - quite sweet which was probably the result of both sugar and the white chocolate. They didn't spread too much on baking and were delicious when warm. I thought that the dried fruit lent them a very nice juicy little tang although I couldn't particularly taste the alcohol. They were also quite creamy and soft. The Scientist gave his an 8 which is the joint top score he's given to any cookie in this project so far. They were pretty popular at work, too - not many comments but some good scores. The average was 8.4 and all the scores were 8s or 9s, so a good strong contender despite the softer texture and lack of dark chocolate. But the critical response was, of course, from the Senior Tutor himself - and he said he went back for a sneaky second one which I take to be a good stamp of approval.

The Boozy Blonde and Fruity one: recipe here