TMc's Double-Chocolate Cherry Cookies

This recipe is based off the classic Tollhouse cookie recipe with the addition of some good-quality cocoa and a bit more sugar. You can use unsweetened or sweetened dried cherries, but I find using the unsweetened ones results in a bit of a puckery-chocolate experience, so I usually lean toward sweetened dried Montmorency cherries.

Course Dessert

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 20

Servings cookies

Author TMc

Ingredients

16 TBSP Unsalted butter (2 sticks - softened)
2 cups Light brown sugar
2 Large eggs
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tsp Almond extract
1 tsp Kosher salt (plus a pinch)
1 tsp Baking soda
2-1/2 cups All-purpose flour
3/4 cup Cocoa powder (I like Ghirardelli cocoa but Hershey's Dark is very nice too)
2 cups Chocolate chips (10-oz bag is about this much, I use Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips as a rule)
2 cups Dried cherries

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Stir flour, cocoa, salt and baking soda together in a bowl with a fork
Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy
Add eggs and extract and mix well
Add dry ingredients and mix well
Add chips and cherries and mix just until incorporated
Scoop out dough and place scoops flat side down on parchment paper on baking sheets – no more than 12 per standard cookie sheet
Bake for about 12 minutes at 350 degrees until cookies are looking set up and getting darker at the edges
Slide parchment with cookies onto cooling racks
Let cool completely before bagging or containerizing

Notes

This recipe is very easy to scale up and down based on your butter and egg. Like so:

1 stick (8 TBSP) butter + 1 large egg + everything else in the base recipe halved yields approximately 2 dozen cookies
3 sticks (24 TBSP) butter + 3 large eggs + everything else in the base recipe times 1.5 yields approximately 6 dozen cookies
...and so on.

My only caution here is that a 1.5 times recipe nearly overflows my 4.5 quart KitchenAid stand mixer bowl. I would not try for more than 6 dozen cookies' worth of dough in one batch unless you've got a really big mixer bowl (at least 7 quart).