Chocolate Cherry Drops

Beware! This blog is for cherry lovers only. And, yes, I do mean the fruit.

Being a chocaholic and a blossoming cook, I am determined to try as many scrumptious-looking chocolate cookie recipes as I possibly can. After all, once you've begun mastering your own chocolate goodies, those frozen cakes you get at restaurants suddenly just don't taste very good, do they?

I found this recipe on one of my favorite websites, AllRecipes, while browsing holiday desserts. You see, I had offered to bring dessert to a holiday party at work, and I was eager to try out something new. I love chocolate covered cherries and I love cookies, so I thought I'd love "Chocolate Cherry Drops." And after all, cherries are sort of a holiday treat, aren't they?

However, the preparation and baking process for me did not go exactly as the recipe intended, for after already softening the butter in the bowl, I realized I had only a half cup of white sugar left. However, I had an unopened bag of brown sugar, so I substituted the other half a cup needed with brown sugar. A faux pas, I know, but it was two o'clock, and I had to have a dessert in hand for the party by four!

I altered the recipe in one other way. It called for one cup of chopped maraschino cherries. Instead of chopping the cherries, I measured out a cup of whole cherries and dipped a knife into the mixing cup. I slashed back and forth, Freddy Krueger style. I did this because I wanted the fragments of cherries the recipe called for, with whole cherries, because I kept thinking to myself how delicious a chocolate-covered cherry is. Another faux pas. In retrospect, I'm glad I did this, because a whole cup of sliced cherries would have added up to a great number of cherries, and already, these cherries overpowered the cookies. There were too damn many! My recommendation to anyone interested in cooking this is to modify to maybe a third of a cup of chopped or sliced cherries. Also, I could barely taste the walnuts, so I would recommend adding an entire cup of walnuts instead of just the half cup the recipe demands.

Additionally, the recipe was so dry, even before I added the cherries and walnuts, that I also had to crack open another egg to mix it. And when I waited the appropriate eight to ten minutes to retrieve it from the oven, I toothpicked a cookie and found they were not done baking. I turned the oven off and left them in the lowering heat for a few more minutes, and that seemed to do the trick.

I tasted the dough and was shocked at how dry and unsweet it was. After baking, the cookies turned out somewhat sweeter, but only because the cherries take over the entire cookies. This was a very quick and easy dessert recipe, and I could, I suppose, tinker it to how my taste buds would like--more walnuts, less cherries, and, actually, I think white chocolate chips would be divine in this--but unless I had an extreme cherry lover coming over for dinner, I doubt I'll ever make it again. And, be warned: Do not eat chocolate cherry drops without a hefty glass of milk.

Do you know what the kicker was in all of this? I received a text while putting these little cherry monsters in the oven: the party was cancelled due to the ice on the roads. Well, I'll be...