Chocolate Tart Cherry Drops

Recipe: 

1 & ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks or large chocolate chips
¾ cup dried cranberries or dried tart cherries

Ease of Baking: 7/10 (fancy drop cookie)

Taste: 7/10

The last chocolate cookie recipe is also another hit! This recipe comes from my sister, and she’s been making it for quite a while. After having this cookie, I can understand why too.

These are pretty typical drop cookies. Blend the butter and sugar first, then slowly add about 1/3 of the wet ingredients, then 1/3 of the dry ingredients, alternating between wet and dry ingredients. Be sure to scrape the edges of the bowl as you go. I tend to add the chocolate chips and other “chunky” items (nuts, oatmeal, dried fruit) toward the end, though there’s no real reason for me to do this.

The different part of this recipe is that it calls for large cookies; “Drop dough by level ¼ cupfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, spacing 3 inches apart. Flatten dough until 2 inches in diameter with bottom of glass that has been dipped in additional granulated sugar.” As you can guess, a quarter cup makes for a large cookie!  I didn’t add the additional granulated sugar on top (I never add additional granulated sugar on top), as I feel it only adds sweetness without a particular taste. When making the cookies, make sure that the cookies are cylindrical; if the dough is shaped like an upside-down Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup, the bottom edges will burn a little.

Again, regarding the ingredients, I used tart cherries and bittersweet chocolate chips.

The cookie is quite dense and moist and reminded me of a brownie.  Comparing these to the other chocolate cookies, they were almost as sweet as the peanut-butter chip chocolate cookies, and significantly sweeter than the mocha pecan balls.  The tart cherries are a fantastic counter-point to the chocolate chips, which is always a plus in my book. Be sure that the cherries are broken up before mixing; I had a few clumpy parts of cherries.  With the tart cherries, there were a few of my friends who were not quite the fan; while they enjoyed the dough, they in general were not fans of tart cherries.  (I mostly ignored their opinion, as they disagreed with me and therefore were clearly wrong).

Suggestions for next time? I enjoyed the cherries, and would add more cherries (try 1 cup, but maybe more). You could replace the cherries with another fruit.  I recommend another tart fruit, though that’s going to be up to the baker.