Fruitcake Cookies - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1 (18 1/2 ounce) package yellow cake mix
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
4 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature (1 stick)
1/4 cup butter flavor shortening
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
3/4 cup unsalted pecans, chopped (or mix of pecans,walnuts, and pistachios or any you prefer)
1/4 cup dried cherries or 1/4 cup cranberries, chopped
1/4 cup dried apricot, chopped
1/4 cup raisins or 1/4 cup sultana

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 F and have ready some ungreased baking sheets.
Cream together the butter, shortening, brown sugar.
Add egg, vanilla, almond extract and beat to combine.
Add cake mix (and if you like, a bit of cinnamon), beating on lowest setting just enough to blend together with no dry bits (overmixing will toughen the dough); dough will be stiff.
Using a wooden spoon, stir in the nuts and dried fruits to blend well.
Using a small meatball scoop, drop blobs of dough onto cookie sheets, spacing them out a bit as they will spread; I get 12 blobs per cookie sheet.
Bake in preheated oven for about 12-14 minutes or until slightly golden; do not overbake.
Let cool 1 minute on baking sheets, then remove carefully to wire racks to cool completely.
Store in cookie tins; these won't keep terribly long, only a few days and no longer than 1 week, so if making in advance you might want to freeze them.