Are these not the happiest little cookies you’ve seen in a long time?

The Kiddo and I were having lunch with our friend Sarah, and we wanted to send her back to college with some goodies. I hadn’t tried this recipe before, but it looked like something Kiddo could easily help with, so we gave it a shot. Huge success! The original recipe called for chocolate icing over the cherries, but they were so colorful and pretty I didn’t have the heart to cover them up.

Cherry chocolate cookies

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 (10-ounce) jar maraschino cherries

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350F
2. Cream together butter and sugar on low speed until light and fluffy; add egg and vanilla and mix well till completely incorporated
3. Stir together flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, and baking soda; add mixture to butter and sugar mixture and stir until combined
4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place on ungreased or parchment-lined cookie sheet. Make a dent in the middle of each cookie with your thumb
5. Drain the cherries, remove any stems and cut cherries in half; put one half cherry in the middle of each cookie
6. Bake at 350F for 10 minutes; cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely

I used my very smallest cookie scoop to shape these and got 40 cookies. Sarah reports these, with coffee, are the breakfast of champions. 🙂