Dry-fruit cookies (Fursecuri - variation)

In the last post I wrote about roasting squash while I made raisin cookies. But although I had most of the ingredients in the house, I didn't have everything, and I was working from a different recipe than the one I posted here. The recipe I used, also from my grandmother Nadia, is more precise but makes about double the amount, that is, a truly impressive quantity of cookies. Make this full quantity only if you intend to give away boxes of the things!

The base recipe goes like this:

Cream 375 g of butter with 375 g of powdered sugar. Mix in six eggs, one by one, then 375 g of flour one tablespoon at a time. Add the grated rind of one orange, a pinch of salt, and finally, 375 g of raisins that have been soaked in rum.

On a cookie sheet (not buttered), place about half a teaspoon of dough for each cookie at 10 cm intervals, and cook at 350 degrees F for 7-8 minutes.

Pretty simple! Except I didn't really have enough raisins, so I substituted a mix of raisins, dried cranberries, blueberries, and cherries. I also didn't have any rum, so I soaked the dried fruits in a mix of madeira and tuica (Romanian plum brandy) for a good long while. And just to make sure the flavour would be rich, I doubled the amount of orange peel.

The result? Massive quantities of cookies, for one. They were also a bit darker, because of the madeira, but still very flavourful. In fact, having different kinds of dried fruit added a little variety to the taste. I encourage you to play with this recipe. Use whatever dried fruit you have, the liquor you soak them in, maybe even vary the kind of citrus peel you use!