Date Nut Pinwheel Cookies – The dates, chocolate and pecans make these cookies truly amazing and delicious.
Happy Holidays everyone! I love love this time of year. I have baked so many cookies recently but recipe, I think is special. Dates, chocolate and pecans, well that is a great marriage. They are amazing, my husband was so reluctant to try these cookies but once he tried it he loved it. They are fairly easy to make but requires some finesse and patience. The first time I made them, they did not turn out so pretty, they were actually quite a big mess. Although they looked pretty bad, they were yummy and were eaten fairly quickly. I changed a couple steps, so if you follow my steps you should have no trouble making these cookies.They are worth it, very very good.
You’ll need about a cup and a half of pitted dates and chopped up roughly.
In a sauce pan, add the sugar, water and chocolate chips.
Over low to medium heat, melt the chocolate and cook the mixture, while continually stirring. Cook this until the chocolate melts and the mixture thickens and it looks like a paste, about 3 to 5 minutes.
This is already good if you were to eat it just like that, but control yourself. 🙂 Add the chopped pecans to this.
Stir the pecans in the date mixture and set it aside.
Now we can start making the cookie dough. Start by adding the butter and sugar in the bowl of your mixer. Mix it until it’s light and fluffy at which point you can add the eggs and vanilla extract.
Continue mixing this until, the eggs are well incorporated. Meanwhile in another bowl, mix the flour, salt and baking soda together. Add the flour mixture to the mixer bowl. Mix in the flour well. The cookie dough will be somewhat soft.
This is why we need to let it cool in the fridge for an hour. Now if you want to speed up the process, I put mine in the freezer and kept it in the freezer for half hour. After I took it out of the freezer, I thought it would be easier if I rolled this out on a cookie sheet so I sprinkled some flour on a large cookie sheet and rolled out the cookie dough in a big square.
Well somewhat square. Pour the date mixture over this and spread it out evenly.
Now roll this up jelly roll style starting with the side farthest from you. Once you have a nice roll, you have to freeze or refrigerate it again for another 20 to 30 minutes. The first time I made these I did not refrigerate the roll and it was very difficult to cut it in slices, so that’s why they ended up looking not so pretty. After the roll has been refrigerated cut the dough into 1/4 inch slices using a serrated knife. I found that a serrated knife works best. Place the cookies on a baking sheet, leaving about an inch in between them.
Bake these puppies in a preheated oven at 350 F degrees for 12 minutes and you’re done. You will thank me, they are truly delicious.
Printable recipe:
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Date Nut Pinwheel Cookies
Ingredients
Filling
- 1½ cup dates pitted and chopped
- ½ cup sugar
- ¼ cup melted chocolate
- ¾ cup water
- 1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped
Dough
- 2 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for work surface
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ cup brown sugar packed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup butter unsalted
- 2 eggs
Instructions
- In a saucepan over medium heat, add the chopped dates, 1/2 cup of sugar, water and melted chocolate and stir constantly until mixture is thick and bubbly. Remove from heat and stir in chopped walnuts or pecans.
- In a mixer add butter, brown sugar and mix until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until thoroughly mixed. Add flour, baking soda and salt and mix well. Refrigerate for about an hour.
- After an hour roll the dough on a floured surface. Spread the date mixture evenly over the dough. Roll the dough jelly-roll style and trim the edges off. Brush off any excess flour. Refrigerate the roll for another half hour.
- With a serrated knife cut into 1/4 inch rolls and place on a greased baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes or until golden brown.
Fantastic! I substituted Nutella for the chocolate. My husband says it’s even better than his mom’s recipe! The dough is very delicate and gooey a little difficult to work with (freezing it helps). After rolled up, I froze it overnight. Very easy to cut.
Do you use light or dark brown sugar or does it not make a difference?
You can use either! Dark brown sugar will give it more of a molasses-y flavor 🙂
when you freeze these rolls, do you have to thaw out dough before baking?
Do you mean if you freeze the dough? Because the recipe doesn’t call for freezing. But yeah if you freeze the dough I would thaw it out first.
Can the baked cookies be frozen?
Yes they can!
do you sell these pinwheel cookies ? If so, how much do they cost? They were my Husband &my favorite cookies.. I am 88 and. No longer bake . Thank you Jeanne Brode
Sorry, I do not! I just provide the recipes. 🙂
Where do you live Jeanne. Perhaps I could mail you some.
How many chocolate chips or squares to make 1/4 cup melted?
1/4 cup melted would be 2 oz of chocolate chips of square
I can tell this is a good recipe just by reading it. I had a catering business for 20+ yrs thanks for the real home made recipes . They are hard to find these days everyone seems to be using cake and cookie mixes these days. Brenda
I love sites that have ”real homemade” recipes not recipes using cake mixes and ready made and cookie mixes . Thanks so much I love baking and cooking when I have more time I will share some of my own recipes with you .. Brenda
I would love that Brenda!
I’ve been looking for what my husband called a pecan pinwheel for years. I came across this a couple days ago and my daughter and I made them today. He says this is almost exactly to what he had as a kid. We made one with the chocolate and one without and he loved them both. Thank you for the recipe!
You’re welcome 🙂
Beautiful! And I think the chocolate, date and nut mixture looks amazing on it’s own 😀 The cookies look delicious too though!
Thank you, I hope you guys will try them. They are really good. I ended up taking them to work and they were gone in no time.