Double Dark Chocolate Cherry Cookies

Do I need to give you reasons to make these cookies?

I can totally do that if you need me to. I’m very good at justifying things as delicious as Double Dark Chocolate Cherry Cookies.

Try a few of these reasons:

#1. These are BY FAR the best cookies I’ve ever made. Soft. Chewy. Fudgey. SO good.

#2. Many students went back to school this week. Busy brains need cookies.

#3. These cookies don’t have nuts so people with allergies can join the fun.

#4. You want to do something nice for the people you work with. Cookies are the quickest route to office popularity.

#5. YOU deserve a good cookie. Admit it, even though it’s only Tuesday, you’ve certainly done something to merit at least one or two super-delicious cookies.

See? Wasn’t that easy?

Here’s what you need:

Bittersweet Chocolate Chips, Flour, Sugar, Brown Sugar, Cocoa, Baking Soda, Salt, Unsalted Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, and Dried Cherries.

Click HERE for a Double Dark Chocolate Cherry Cookie Shopping List

This recipe calls for softened, room temperature butter so be sure to set your butter out for at least an hour before you begin baking.

In a large bowl, sift together 1  3/4 cups flour, 1 1/4 cups unsweetened cocoa….

2 teaspoons baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

Sift slowly and carefully unless you want a cocoa cloud in your kitchen.

You might have a few lumps of cocoa in the bottom of your strainer or sifter. Go ahead and push on them with the back of a spoon so they will break up and go through the mesh of the sifter.

Put the dry ingredients aside while you prepare the other ingredients.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine 2 1/2 sticks (that’s 1 1/4 cups) softened, room temperature butter with 1 1/4 cups sugar and 3/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar.

Mix (or cream) the butter and sugars together on medium high speed until they are light and fluffy.

Creamy. This is why room temperature butter is so important. You can’t get a truly creamy texture if your butter is even slightly cold.

Add 2 large eggs…

and 1/4  teaspoon of real vanilla extract. Mix until well combined.

With the mixer on the lowest speed, slowly add the cocoa/flour mixture and mix only until combined.

Now for the good stuff. Add 1 (10 ounce) bag of Bittersweet Chocolate Chips.

For this recipe, I think Bittersweet Chocolate Chips are key. They have less sugar and a higher concentration of Cacao – the lovely bean that differentiates between milk, dark, semisweet, bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate. My favorite bittersweet chips are Ghirardelli but most stores should sell some variety. (And no, Ghirardelli doesn’t pay me or give me free chocolate….but I think that’s a great idea if they’d like to start.)

In addition to the chocolate, add 1 1/2 cups dried cherries.

1 1/2 cups is about 9 ounces of cherries. My store sells cherries in a 6 ounce bag so this will leave you with 1/2 a bag leftover. If you don’t eat them right out of the bag while you bake the cookies, try dried cherries on your breakfast oatmeal. They get all tangy and plump.

Stir the chocolate chips and cherries into the batter on low speed.

At this point the batter is extremely sticky and a little hard to work with. I recommend a quick trip to the refrigerator to chill the batter for about 20 minutes.

When the batter has chilled, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a baking liner. Roll the dough into small balls about the size of a ping pong ball.

If you have one of those tiny ice cream scoops, use it to make perfectly round cookies. Surprisingly, I do not have  a scoop so I just rolled by hand. Either way, try to make the cookie balls all the same size so that they cook evenly. Leave 2 inches of space around each cookie so they have room to expand while they bake.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes until puffed and slightly cracked on the tops.

Allow the cookies to cool for a few minutes on the pan to set their shape then move them to a wire rack to cool.

This is another recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cookie Book. I made a few changes in the original recipe to make life easier (such as using chocolate chips instead of cutting up chocolate bars and chilling the dough) but so far every recipe I’ve made from this cookbook has been a keeper.

I think everyone deserves some cookies and milk. No excuses needed!

Here’s the recipe:

Double Dark Chocolate Cherry Cookies

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