Breaking down fruit with sugar and water for cookies

Question

I just made some amazing date cookies. They were made swiss-roll style; you make the date-mixture, then spread it on a rolled-out layer of dough, and roll it; then refrigerate, and cut into 1/4-inch cookies.

Yum.

For the filling, the recipe required me to take two cups of pitted dates, and cook them on medium-low with half a cup of sugar, and a cup of water. As a result, the dates (which were dry, sticky, and very firm) ended up becoming a nice, sweet brown paste.

It occurred to me that perhaps I can apply the same method to other fruits. Does it work? Are there certain fruits (or classes/categories of fruits) that will break down well on a low heat with some water and sugar, and can hold their own inside swiss-roll style cookies?

Ideally, your answer should not be a laundry list, but some sort of general principle I can apply to any given fruit to figure out if I can use it or not. But a laundry list is okay too of which fruits will work well and which ones won't.

Answer 1

The cooking technique to make the filling is basically the same as any compote or jam so I would say it would work well for most soft bodied fruit and other jam favourites.

You may have to modify the technique slightly to accommodate for fruit with higher water content to get the same spreadable texture: i.e. simmer the fruit in the sugar water until it starts to break down, strain and reserve the fruit and then either reduce the remaining liquid or only use a fraction of it and recombine with the fruit.