Cherry-Chocolate Cookies

I came across this recipe in the Cook's Illustrated cookbook. I was looking for something that I could bring to my dearest friend's housewarming party. I love making cakes for people, but a three layer cake was unlikely to make it to South Pasadena in one piece, plus a cookie is something you don't have to cut and serve on places. So, a cookie it was!

The process that is the most annoying in cookie-making is the scooping of the dough! You want to make all the cookies uniformly sized, but that's hard to do. Plus there is always the danger of placing too much dough on a sheet resulting in a giant merged cookie. Well, this recipe embraced the giant merged cookie! It's really genius.You mix all your dry ingredients (including dried cherries - yum!), then slowly add the softened butter, dump the dough on a cookie sheet and spread/press with your hands. Why didn't I think of this?



But as cool as it was to bake a cookie-the-size-of-a-sheet, the best part was the way they did the chocolate glaze. No melting of chocolate required. You just sprinkle chocolate chips/chunks on the hot cookie, wait 5 minutes for the chocolate melt and spread! It worked perfectly - the glaze was smooth, the hazelnuts stuck, and it yielded sharp clean edged cookies.