Fig Cookies

These bites of delight are bold with dried fruit and spices and kept fresh with orange zest. The contrast of the smooth filling with the bite of fig seeds and crunch of nonpareils sprinkles gives the cookies a depth of excitement that most cookies don’t have. 

Call them what you like – fig cookies, Italian fig cookies, or Sicilian fig cookies. They’re common around Christmas, but I always think they shine in March when it’s time for St. Joseph alters which is a way to thank St. Joseph for his help on relieving a drought that happened in Sicily during the middle ages. If you haven’t been to a St. Joseph alter, I encourage you to find one and go even if you aren’t Catholic. Find an area that has a Sicilian immigrant population (even if not a recent one) and look for the Catholic church. Chances are, they’ll have a St. Joseph alter. You can also google “St. Joseph alter, (insert your town or nearby city)”.

Fig cookies are one of my dad’s favorite cookies and I feel guilty for posting them and not shipping him any. Sadly, I am out of Paulina figs so I am also missing out. Hint, hint, hint! 

Note: These cookies are time consuming, but still takes less time than if you were decorating sugar cookies. I usually make the filling and dough the day before. Refrigerate the dough and filling separately and take them out about 30 minutes before you’re ready to roll out the dough.

Some people cut the cookies straight and don’t do slits. Others cut the cookies on an angle. I’ve seen them covered in brightly-colored icing and no sprinkles. However, I like the crunch of the sprinkles and that’s how I most commonly see them.

Fig Cookies
Makes about 39
Filling Ingredients
½ c sherry wine
1 Tbl orange zest  (have 2 oranges on hand)
2 Tbl orange juice
3 c dried figs
¾ c raisins
¾ c walnuts
¾ c honey
⅛ tsp salt
¾ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp cloves
½ tsp nutmeg

Filling Directions
Add ½ c sherry wine to a food processor. Zest an orange to get 1 Tbl orange zest. I like to lightly pack it to get a little bigger quantity. Add it to the food processor along with 2 Tbl orange juice, 3 c dried figs, ¾ c raisins, ¾ c walnuts, ¾ c honey, ⅛ tsp salt, ¾ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp cloves, and ½ tsp of nutmeg.

Pulse the fruit mixture until it’s nearly smooth. If your fruit was extremely dry, you may need to add a tiny bit of water. It should be a thick paste.

Note If you don’t have sherry wine, you can use rum or vodka. You don’t want something strongly flavored like whisky, but the substitutions can be pretty liberal.

Dough Ingredients
2 ½ c AP flour
½ c sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
8 Tbl frozen butter (or cold butter if you use a pastry cutter)
2 eggs
6 Tbl milk

Dough Directions
In a large bowl, add 2/12 c AP flour, ½ c sugar, 1 ½ tsp baking powder, and ½ tsp of salt. Mix to incorporate the ingredients.

Grate 8 Tbl butter on the large holes of a box grater and stir into the dry ingredients. An alternative would be to use a pastry cutter and cut in refrigerator cold butter until the butter is about pea size.

Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add 2 eggs and 6 Tbl milk. Stir until fully incorporated. It will feel really dry at first and will be easier to mix the dough with your hands. It might be tempting to add more liquid, but don’t because it will be harder to roll the dough out.

Glaze Ingredients
3 c powder sugar
6 Tbl milk
4 tsp clear vanilla extract
1/16 tsp salt
Rainbow nonpareils sprinkles (the small, multi-color balls)

Glaze Directions
Sift your powder sugar into a large bowl. If you don’t have a sifter use a fine mesh strainer. Add powdered sugar to the basket. Hold the strainer handle close to the basket with your nondominant hand. Knock the basket brim with the exterior of your fist with your dominant hand. It seems like an unnecessary step, but it can be really hard to stir out lumps.

Add 6 Tbl milk, 1 Tbl vanilla extract, and 1/16 tsp salt to the sugar and stir until well combined. You want it a tad runny but thick enough to have a good coating on the cookie. Add more sugar if you want it thicker or more milk if you want it thinner. Cover the bowl with a wet paper towel until ready to use.

Note If your vanilla is dark, use ½ tsp of vanilla and make up for the remainder of the liquid with milk.

Assemble

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Put parchment on two baking sheets or grease two baking sheets.

Sprinkle flour over a large surface (about 3 ft by 2 ft) and have a little more space around the flour to have room to maneuver. If you’re working in a smaller space, divide the dough in half. Put the dough on the surface and sprinkle more flour on top of the dough.

Pat it into a rectangle. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to ⅛” thick. I like to start in the middle of the dough and roll it in a single direction towards the top. Repeat the step except roll it to the bottom, then to the sides. This method helps to give you an even dough consistency and to stay in a relative rectangle shape. If the dough is sticking or tearing, add more flour. Make sure it’s not sticking on the bottom. 

Take a dough cutter and trim the top edge to make it straight. If you don’t have a dough cutter, you can use a pizza cutter or a sharp knife. Just make sure you can cut on your counter surface. If you can’t do so, you can roll the dough on a cutting or pastry board.

Take a ruler and measure 3” from the top and make a small horizontal notch. Repeat about every 4”. Take the dough cutter and connect the notches to create a strip. Repeat the steps until you have all 3” tall strips. Square off the edges.

Add filling to a piping bag. Cut a 1 ¼” diagonal slit at the corner of the bag. Twist the top of the bag tightly to push the filling towards the bottom of the bag. Squeeze the filling down the length of the strips. Refill the bag as needed.

Pinch the dough together around the filling to create long strips. Use the dough cutter and cut the cookies into 2” wide pieces. Take the dough scraps and roll it into a 3” wide strip and fill it with the filling.

Take a sharp paring knife and cut two vertical slits into one side. Curve the cookie away from the slits to create a relaxed crescent. Put it on the baking sheet. Space the cookies 1” apart, but you don’t need to worry about the cookies spreading.

If you can see dry flour on your cookies, dip your finger in water and brush the flour with your wet finger.

Bake about 10-15 min. The dough will be firm to the touch and the palest of browns if any brown at all. Remove it from the oven to cool.

After the cookies are room temperature, stir the glaze. Adjust the consistency if needed. Take one cookie at a time and dip it face down into the bowl. Lay the cookies face up on a cooling rack on a cookie sheet to catch the glaze drips. After you do about 4-5 cookies, add the sprinkles. You don’t want to glaze too many cookies at once because the glaze will start drying before the sprinkles stick.

The cookies freeze really well.

Note If you don’t have a piping bag, you can use a freezer Ziploc bag. A storage bag will likely burst. If that’s not an option, you can spoon it onto the strips. I’ve done it before but it’s harder to have uniform filling.