Bisquick Cherry Fruit Chews

Cherry fruit chews are a vintage Bisquick recipe straight from the back of the box, the kind of one-bowl bar cookie that earned a permanent spot in church cookbooks for a reason: chewy, fruit-studded, and dead simple to make in bulk. Seven ingredients turn into four dozen festive bars in under an hour.

Bisquick (or any biscuit baking mix) is the smart shortcut. It already contains flour, baking powder, and a touch of fat, so you skip the leavening measurement and get a predictable rise every time. Just butter, sugar, eggs, and the mix, then fold in the dates, walnuts, and maraschino cherries.

The maraschino cherries are non-traditional fruit cake territory, sweet, dyed-red, and a little kitschy in the best way. Combined with the deep caramel notes from chopped dates and the toasty walnuts, they produce a bar that’s part fruit cake, part blondie, part old-school holiday cookie tin.

Pro Tips

• Drain the maraschino cherries thoroughly and pat dry with paper towel. Wet cherries leak red liquid into the batter and produce streaky, soggy bars.
• Toast the walnuts for 5 minutes in a dry pan before chopping. Untoasted nuts taste flat against the rich fruit and sugar.
• Don’t overbake. Pull at 30 minutes when the edges are set and the top is golden but the center still has slight give. Overbaked, these turn cakey and dry.
• Cool only slightly before cutting, the recipe is right. Hot bars tear, while a brief cool keeps them pliable enough for clean 1.5-inch squares.

Variations

• Substitute pecans for walnuts. Pecans pair especially beautifully with dates.
• Add a teaspoon of almond extract for a deeper, more pronounced cherry flavor.
• Swap dates for chopped dried apricots or cranberries for a different fruit profile.