Chocolate-covered cherry cookies are decadent and delightful

Ivolunteered to bring some of the refreshments for this month’s spinners and weavers guild meeting and as soon as I offered someone called out “Bring something chocolate!”

I had intended to make a chocolate truffle cheesecake since it’s too large of a dessert for just my husband and I even if we invite the kids over, but if I own a 9-inch Springform pan, I have no clue where it’s been hiding.

I’m borrowing my stepdaughter’s pan and will make it for some other occasion involving a group of people larger than our immediate family. I’ll let you know how it comes out. (You’ll probably see that recipe here in a month or so.)

But back to the immediate need for something chocolate for a group that usually snacks on things like cheese and fruit. The black bean brownies probably would have been a hit with this somewhat health-conscious group, but I don’t think health is what folks were thinking when they asked for something chocolate.

Enter the chocolate-covered cherry cookie in all of its decadence. This really isn’t a difficult cookie to make. Topped with a chocolate fudge sauce before baking, it turned into a sweet, chewy confection of a cookie, definitely designed to meet the chocolate sweet tooth cravings of most anyone.

In my book, the recipe has only a few flaws: it makes too few cookies and it leaves you with both leftover fudge sauce and about half a can of unused sweetened condensed milk. Of course, those problems could be remedied by making a triple or even quadruple batch of the cookies, a solution that would have made my husband happy, because I didn’t have a lot of leftovers for him to sample. Or you can heat the remaining milk with more chocolate chips to the soft-ball stage, transfer to a buttered pan and refrigerate for a chocolate caramel type of fudge.

Chocolatecovered Cherry

Cookies

Dough:

1/2 cup softened butter 1 cup granulated white sugar 1 egg 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups of flour 1/1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda Topping:

1 jar maraschino cherries 4 teaspoons of juice from the cherries 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk 1 cup chocolate chips Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

*** Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the egg and vanilla, mixing until well-blended. Add the dry ingredients, stirring by hand as this makes a very stiff dough.

Form the dough into balls slightly smaller than a walnut.

The recipe makes 18-24 cookies.

Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicon sheet. Using your thumb, make a divot in each ball and insert a cherry into the divot and place the cookies on the prepared sheet, about two inches apart (they won’t spread very much.)

Heat the sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips either on the stovetop over low heat, or in a microwave oven, heating the mixture about 10 seconds at a time and stirring to aid melting. Do not overheat.

Once the chocolate is melted, add the 4 teaspoons of cherry juice and stir until the fudge sauce is smooth and uniform.

Drizzle about a teaspoon of the sauce over each cookie (I liked my cherries completely covered and still had lots of sauce left over.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Cool on the baking sheets to allow the cookies to set properly before moving to a rack to cool completely.

May be stored in a sealed container, or frozen for future use.

Christine Haines is a retired reporter and a culinary enthusiast who collects recipes from around the world and throughout historic time periods, often adding her own twist to an old tradition. She encourages her readers to cook adventurously.