Chocolate Chunk and Cherry Cookies

If I had a choice between eating cake and a eating a double-double animal style burger from In-N-Out, I would choose the burger. Many American desserts are so overpowering with sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup, that I often do not taste the flavor of the fruit or the chocolate that the dessert is supposed to have it. For that reason, I don’t spend a lot of time eating desserts and I don’t spend a lot of time making them. Well Saturday night I decided to stop complaining, step out of my comfort zone, and bake cookies from scratch for the first time in over 25 years. The ultimate goal is to make desserts that are flavorful, but not too sweet. I will call it “grown folks” dessert. (I am coining that phrase!)

Note: This is NOT an official recipe, but a first step in creating the recipe.

I used a modified version of the Alton Brown chocolate chip recipe for this first attempt

Ingredients

• 2 sticks organic unsalted butter
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour (King Arthur Brand)
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 tablespoons of agave nectar
• 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup dried cherries
• 1 section of the dark chocolate with chili bar on top of each cookie

Cream the sugar and butter together. Add the wet ingredients, then add the dry ingredients. Save the dark chocolate to top the cookie just before baking. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes. The results were pretty good, I really should have added more of the chocolate bar to the batter, instead of just on top of the cookie prior to baking. So on my next attempt I will add 1/2 cup of the dark chocolate with chili to the batter to see if I correct the sparseness of the first batch of cookies. Enjoy the photos

Before

After