Cherry Chocolate Kiss Cookies

It’s February, and that means everything Valentine’s Day related is being thrown at our faces in this month of love. I for one am not a fan of the holiday, except when it comes to the endless possibilities for sweets! I’m more inclined to celebrate February 15th, when all the candy goes on sale 🙂

Anyway, this super easy recipe for cherry chocolate kiss cookies caught my eye because of the beautiful pale pink shade you get from the mixture of maraschino cherries, plus the few drops of red food dye, it just screams Valentines day. Besides that, the combination of cherry, almond extract, with dark chocolate? Absolute heaven.

Today’s recipe comes from Plattertalk.com, recipe link at the bottom as always, and its super easy and quick, which is a big bonus in my book! Most recipes for this particular cookie are relatively identical, so feel free to browse the web if you find one you prefer.

Since I was not home, I do lack an ingredients pic, but below is what you will need:

• 1 cup butter, softened to room temperature
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons maraschino cherry juice
• 1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
• 6 drops red food coloring, optional
• 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup coarsely chopped maraschino cherries
• About 30milk chocolate kisses, unwrapped

The serving for this recipe is 30, and I actually did get 30 cookies from the batch, so plenty to go around, or to gobble up for yourself.

First preheat your oven to 350 degrees and in a stand or hand mixer, cream the softened butter, powdered sugar and salt until well combined. Next you are going to add 2 teaspoons of maraschino cherry juice, almond extract and 6 drops of red food coloring. Now, I’m a gal that likes almond extract, so I added a full teaspoon of it to my mixture, but completely up to your preference.

Beautiful pale pink color 🙂

Next step is to gradually and slowly add in your flour and baking soda. now at this point I noticed my dough getting very sandy and dry, so if this happens to you as well, that’s ok.

Measure out 1/2 – 3/4 of a cup of maraschino cherries and chop them up coarsely. You will notice before folding in the cherries that your dough looks almost pale and no longer pink. Once you add the cherries you will get the color back, I promise!

Folding in the cherries

Grease your baking sheets and roll out 1 inch balls of dough placing them roughly 1 inch apart from each other. Since I was not using my home stove, these cooked a little longer than the recipe had called for, but what is suggested is 8-10 minutes, or until they are lightly browned on the bottom. You do not want to burn this cookie as you will lose that pretty pink color.

For me, after about 10 minutes, the cookies still seemed rather doughy and found that at 14 minutes my cookies are just lightly browned at the bottom and ready to be taken out. (FYI – I was at my parents house and they have a more heavy duty stove plus light baking sheets than me.)

Once they are done, remove from the oven and immediately push desired candy onto the top of your baked cookie. I would highly recommend using a dark chocolate candy like the dove dark chocolate hearts or Hershey’s dark chocolate kisses. Something about the cherry and almond with dark chocolate makes these cookies taste amazing!

Let cool for 2 minutes on baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack for complete cooling. These taste really good slightly warm with that melted piece of chocolate on the top! Simple, sweet and delicious!

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram @Phreya to see all my baked creations!

Chocolate Cherry Kiss Cookies – Plattertalk.com