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| Servings: | 60 |
| Yield: | 4 to 5 – dozen |
Ingredients
- 2 cups shortening
- 3 cups white sugar
- 6 eggs
- 8 cups all-purpose flour
- 7 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 cups whole milk
- 4 pounds dried figs
- 1 pound raisins
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ½ cup white sugar
- 1 whole orange, with peel
- 1 small apple
- 1 ½ cups chopped pecans
- 1 cup water (Optional)
Instructions
- To Make Dough: Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs, vanilla, and salt. Blend in flour and baking powder by hand. Knead dough until smooth and workable. Add milk to reach workable consistency. (This takes a while and you will get a workout, but you’ll know when it’s right.)
- To Make Filling: Cut up figs, orange, and apple into small pieces. (It is easier to grind this way). Grind figs, raisins, orange, and apple. If the mixture is too dry or thick, mix in up to 1 cup of water, if desired. (I do not use the water, the juice from the apple and orange are enough). The spices and chopped nuts are added to the ground fig mixture. After the fig mixture is ground, I sprinkle them in over the mixture and mix (knead) it in by hand. STICKY! But good.
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
- Roll out some dough. (should be kind of thin). Put fig mixture in a line. Wrap dough over mixture, sealing figs inside dough. Trim to desired length, using a diagonal cut. Make small diagonal slits in the sides of the cookies. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 10-15 minutes. (Dough makes good cookies without the filling also). Wonderful with coffee.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 302 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 52 g |
| Cholesterol | 19 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 5 g |
| Protein | 4 g |
| Saturated Fat | 2 g |
| Sodium | 72 mg |
| Sugars | 33 g |
| Fat | 10 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
These cookies were awesome!! I live in New Orleans where we have a very large Italian population. My husband is Hispanic but he has to have all sorts of Italian cookies for Christmas, it is tradition here. This is the best recipe ever, but it is a ton of work involved. The fig mixture is moist and delicious but it’s too much for the amount of dough. My husband ate it topped with vanilla ice cream. I’m keeping this recipe for these annual cookies.
Sadly, all the components of this recipe are delicious but the actual directions and composition as well as the quantity of the ingredients is way off. This makes enough filling for double the amount of dough. I knew something was off when the filling called for 4 lbs. of figs. I went along with it but it made way to much filling. The dough is good despite the reviews I reads about the shortening flavour. It is flaky and crunchy. I plowed through this but it was painful. the dough was not the right consistency and led to much repair trying to close the log. As I am a proficient cook and baker I made it work because the prep work was arduous and the ingredients costly. I wouldn’t make them again. I have enough filling left for 2 lovely pork roasts.
Excellent cookies! I substituted butter for the shortening and walnuts for the pecans and they were great!!
I followed the recipe exactly and these cookies are delicious! I had no problems with the dough or the filling. I had some trouble getting them to the right size though. Not sure how to make them come out perfect but I seem to be the only one in the family who cares about that! Thanks for the recipe!
The flavor was phenomenal. I also used butter instead of shortening. I’m giving this 4 stars for 2 reasons. 1 – I used almost a full cup of milk and the resulting dough was way too sticky. Next time, I think I’ll only need half. 2 – the instructions for construction were confusing. I just rolled out the dough how I pleased, made goo logs and placed those along the edge. Once the goo logs were placed so it was the same length as an edge, I rolled or folded the dough over to seal it inside – leaving the edge goo exposed. I then cut from there.
followed cookie dough recipe exactly, except used butter as others recommended; very good. used a good fig jelly as filling, and that’s what saddened these cookies:( tip: USE THIS FILLING RECIPE even the best jelly is still just jelly
This recipe is perfect!
This will be my third year making these for the holidays. Wonderful recipe. A couple notes: I don’t have a grinder, but the food processor works fine if you keep your batches of fig mixture small. Throw about a handful of the chopped-up mix in there, pulse the mix until it just starts to goo up, and then dump it out. Keep the pieces relatively big. Second, absolutely let the filling rest for a few hours before you put it in the cookies. Third, when you’re icing them (basic milk+powered sugar), just do a few before you sprinkle on the nonpareils. If the icing hardens, the little balls just bounce off. Fourth, this make way more filling than cookie. About 50% more than you need (and I just made a batch of 212 with the cookie dough). I put the rest of the filling in the freezer and make a half-batch in the summer.
The dough was too soft and I kept adding more flour. I filled them with jarred mincemeat because I was looking for an alternative to mince pie for Thanksgiving. I also halved the recipe, which was plenty – I had 2 jars of mince and ran out. The cookies are tasty, but really delicate and a bit messy looking.
Sounds like a delicious cookie, but I would like to use the fresh figs I just plucked off the trees; any help as to how to do that?
The fig mixture on this was good and close to a cookie I had at an Italian bakery. The dough, however, was quite a mess. The only change I made was using butter instead of shortening, and I refrigerated the dough overnight. I also didn’t use the entire portion of milk, as it was getting soupy. I was still unable to roll out the dough. I’ll continue to try and work with the dough so that I’m able to roll it out with a rolling pin – I’m not giving up yet!
An update on this recipe as of 12/20/15…Made these again today and just noticed that the yield as listed on the recipe is 60 or 5 dozen. I’ll tell you that isn’t even close to what I got, which was closer to 15 dozen… from 2014 – This will be the second year that I’m making these cookies. They were such a hit with everyone, including those who thought they didn’t like figs! The whole orange gives this such a wonderful fresh taste and the apple keeps them so moist. I had a few dozen left and they were in the freezer from Christmas until July when I pulled them out for a few friends who stopped over for coffee. We couldn’t believe how wonderful they still tasted. They’ve been hounding me to be sure I’m making them for Christmas. Now that’s a memorable cookie!
This is a great recipe, it has become a traditional Christmas Cookie for us, on thing though, the recipe is not clear how to roll out the dough and width to cut the dough to fill and roll. So I just guess about a four by twelve inch strip of dough should get it.
Great recipe but in my cookies I also add hazelnuts, mixed candied fruit, wine, tangerine peel, pine nuts, chocolate syrup, dates, black pepper. The rest of the ingredients are the same. All ingredients are put through the grinder & then mix well. I have brought these as gifts to my doctor’s office & this year they asked if I was making more for them.
These were ok. I followed the recipe almost exactly. Didn’t have an orange, so I omitted that ingredient. They were time consuming, but not hard. I don’t think they taste ANYTHING like fig newtons. I think they taste similar to apple pie for some reason. My kids think so also. Good recipe…. just not what I expected.
Just made these and they are so delicious! Thank you so much for sharing your recipe!
These taste exactly like the cookies that my Italian Grandmothers from Sicily would make every year for Christmas. I used walnuts instead of pecans. This recipe makes a lot of cookies. They freeze well and we enjoyed them the entire holiday season. Brings back some great childhood memories from a large Italian family!
I found the dough didn’t seem to have the right consistence so I will experiment but I used mincemeat instead of the figs and besides the dough not coming out right it was delicious
This is very similar to my great great grandmother’s recipe, who also brought it from Italy in the early 1900s.(we use walnuts instead of pecans, and leave out the apple, but hey, perfection is all in the eye of the beholder. The one thing that I would definitely recommend though is allowing the fig mixture to sit for a few hours to a few days before making the cookies. This allows the flavors to meld together and it makes them taste better consistently. They are well worth the time and effort.
Grinding the filling means to put it in what is called a meat or sausage grinder. The manual ones clip onto the edge of the table or cabinet and a handle is turned. There are some that have a vacuum base. There are electric ones and Kitchen Aid has one as an attachment for their mixer. A food processor will not substitute for a grinder. The texture will be different and much coarser, which is why your filling was too thick and dry.
I love fig newtons and these sound delicious. Can’t wait to try them but I want to be clear about part of the instructions…it says to “grind” the fruit? As in a food processor? Since I don’t have one, I’m just rying to figure out a good alternative. Thanks for any suggestions.