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Title: 1986 Winner: Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies
Yield: 48 Servings

Ingredients

  1 1/2 c  flour
    1/2 c  unsweetened cocoa powder
    1/4 ts salt
    1/4 ts baking powder
    1/4 ts baking soda
    1/2 c  butter or margarine,
      1    softened
      1 c  sugar
      1 ea egg
  1 1/2 ts vanilla
     48 ea maraschino cherries
 
  --------------------------------FROSTING----------------------------------
      6 oz semisweet chocolate chips
    1/2 c  sweetened condensed milk
      1    cherry juice (4 to 5 tsp)

Instructions

Preparation time: 45 minutes Baking time: 10 minutes

1. In bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and
baking soda. In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add
egg and vanilla to butter-sugar mixture and beat well. Gradually add
dry ingredients to butter-sugar mixture and beat until well blended.
2. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet
and push down center of each ball with thumb. Drain cherries and
reserve juice. Place 1 cherry in center of each indentation. Heat
oven to 350 degrees.
3. For frosting, put chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk in
small saucepan. Heat until chocolate melts. Stir in 4 teaspoons cherry
juice. If too thick, add more juice.
4. Spoon 1 teaspoon frosting over each cherry. Spread to cover
cherry. Bake 10 minutes or until done. Do not overcook. Remove to
wire rack and cool. The cookies freeze nicely.
Winner Donna M. Farrell of Naperville entered her chocolate covered
cherry cookie recipe: "Christmas and chocolate-covered cherries are
forever entwined in my mind and memories. Not the expensive
department store kind, mind you, with their dark bitter chocolate and
runny syrup, but your basic Brach's. Each Christmas found the coveted
white box stretching my stocking, two layers of cream-filled heaven
with a cherry floating therein--and no requirement to share them with
anyone.
"Taste and calories have kept me away from the box of delights for
many years, even after the incredible discovery that Brach's actually
sold these morsels all year long. (How my parents managed to deceive
me on this, I'll never know.) That is, until my mother-in-law came to
Chicago one autumn with the ultimate cookie. A Christmas tradition in
one bite. Nostalgia from the oven. Capable of reducing this
36-year-old woman's taste buds and mentality to that of my 9-year-old
daughter. A chocolate-covered cherry cookie!" from the Chicago
Tribune annual Food Guide Holiday Cookie Contest December 4, 1986

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