Double Chocolate Cherry Chip Cookies

I'm telling you now, these cookies will not last long in your cookie tin.  They are moist, fudgy, and loaded with yummy chocolate flavor.  Perfect for the choco-holic in your life.

While out grocery shopping with the little guy the other day I came across these baking chips.

Now, of course, the Hersey's Special Dark chips I was familiar with, but I had never seen cherry baking chips before.  I immediately thought of chocolate covered cherries and went in search for the dark chocolate chips.  My vision was to make an extremely chocolatey cookie and marry these two flavors together - think cherry cordial.  Yum!

When I got home I searched out the perfect chocolate cookie recipe.  I like using AllRecipes.com because the recipes on this site seem to have the most reviews and the most helpful suggestions on how to improve the recipe if it needs it.  I found the Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies recipe, which apparently is a Nestle Tollhouse original.  Who knew?  In place of the chocolate chunks, I used the cherry and dark chocolate chips.  Oh, I'm so glad I did!

These cookies are amazing and everything I dreamed they would be!  Fudgy and moist in the center, and that cherry flavor really goes will with the dark chocolate.  They truly do taste just like a cherry covered cherry in cookie form.

One of the best parts is that these cookies stayed moist even after a night in the cookie tin.  Delish!  If you can track down these cherry baking chips (I found them at WalMart), you really should give these cookies a try.  And share them....I know it's hard, but you'll make lots of friends!

 

 

Double Chocolate Cherry Chip Cookies

Adapted from AllRecipes.com via Nestle Tollhouse

 

2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup baking cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 cup cherry baking chips

1 cup dark chocolate baking chips
 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.  In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars.  Add eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.  Mix in vanilla.

3. Gradually beat in flour mixture.  Stir in baking chips.

4. Scoop with a medium cookie disher and roll in to balls.  These cookies did not spread very much for me so I flattened the balls a little with the palm of my hands before placing them on the cookie sheet. Drop on to ungreased cookie sheets.

5. Bake in preheated oven for 8-11 minutes, or until cookies are puffed and centers are set but still soft.  Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

 

Printable Recipe

Color Sorting Cups

While perusing Pinterest, as I so often do during naptime, I came across this neat idea for color sorting cups.  My little guy turned 2 in October, and we've been working on colors lately.  I thought this might give him a good hands on way to learn more about his colors.  So to Wally-World we did go!  In addition to my Revlon Red nail polish, we also threw in to the cart the following items:
 

Take&Toss Plastic Cups w/Lids, Colorful Buttons, X-Acto Knife

Beebo (yeah, that's his nickname - I'll tell ya all about it sometime, promise) was pretty excited to get his colorful buttons home and make a big giant mess!  But he was not too happy when he learned that mama was going to cut holes in his cups.  No worries little guy, it's all part of the plan.  Using the largest sized buttons as a guide, I cut slits in the lids so the buttons could drop in to the cups.

I wanted the hole in to the lid large enough so the big button could slip through, but the smaller buttons would stay in the cups when the bowl was tipped over.  Because, let's face it, as soon as this cup is full of buttons it will turn in to a maraca.  I finished the yellow cup and moved on to the next color.  Using the yellow lid as a guide, I marked the next lid with a Sharpie marker so I knew where to cut.

 

It was about this time that I realized the cups did not all have matching lids.  In fact, the only matching set was yellow.  The rest of the cups were all blue and green, and the lids were orange and red.  What the what?!  Okay, no need to panic.  Just needed to rethink my plan of action.

I determined that I would let the Beebs play with the yellow, blue, and green button cups with lids off.  That way he could drop buttons right in to the cups. Things could get messy, but hey, that's life!

 

He had a pretty good time with that, but we did run in to one little hang-up.  The buttons that we bought came with two shades of blue, which he found sort of confusing.  So I took one set of blue out and left the others.
 

 

After that, he quickly got the hang of which buttons went in which cups.
 

 

When he had those three colors down pretty well, I put those away and introduced the red and orange button cups.  I was able to leave the lids on those cups and just explain to him to drop the orange buttons in the cup with the orange lid, red goes with red, etc.

 

 

This was a fun and quick project, and the best part is they store really easily.  Once we're done with our buttons they go in the matching cups with the lids on and get stacked up in the craft cupboard.  Of course, buttons are still pretty small and little folks like to put small things in their mouths, so this project should be used with adult supervision only.  I'll be on the lookout for cups with matching lids, but for the time being this is working out pretty well and helping my little guy learn his colors fast!