Chocolate Cherry Cookies

These delicious chocolatey cookies are like digging into a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream, but healthier, vegan, and better for sharing because you don't have to fight over the good stuff. They're perfect with a glass of red wine too! The chocolate cookie is like a fudge brownie, and the cherry center is... ummm... the cherry on top ;-)

If you aren't a fan of cherries, these would also be good with a raspberry filling. See my notes at the end for more on that.

Recipe from the Tolerant Vegan (altered slightly)
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Earth Balance buttery spread
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 small-medium banana, ripe and mashed
• 1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 and 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• Dark morello cherries in syrup (you'll need about 24)
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips 
• 1/2 cup non-dairy vanilla milk
• 1 to 1 1/2 tsp of the syrup from cherry jar

Steps:

1. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.
2. Add in the mashed banana and vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking soda and powder, salt, and cocoa powder. 
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix well; the batter will be fairly thick.
5. Preheat the oven to 350 F. 
6. Scoop out the batter into small balls and slightly flatten. Place on cookie sheet and press a small circle into the center of each cookie using your thumb or forefinger. Add a cherry to each center.
7. In a small saucepan, place the chocolate chips and milk. Melt over low heat, constantly stirring with a whisk. Remove from heat and add 1-3 tsp of juice from cherry jar (amount depending on how sweet you want the sauce).
8. Scoop about a tsp of the melted chocolate over the cherries in the center of each cookie.
9. Bake for 10-12 minutes. After removing from the oven, add another tsp of melted chocolate to cover the top of each cookie and allow to cool.

Notes:
I'm actually not much of a chocolate person, but did really like these cookies. I did have about a 1/4 cup of the chocolate sauce leftover though, so if you don't want that hanging around your fridge, I'd cut back the sauce ingredients to 3/4 cup chocolate chips and a little over 1/4 cup milk. I also cut back the syrup used in the sauce from the original recipe since I thought it would be too sweet with any more, but feel free to add up to 3 tsp depending on your preference.

If you can't find Morello cherries, try another tart dark cherry (the Morello ones taste better though!). The first time I made these I used organic, low sugar maraschino cherries, which worked fine, but might have been a tad sweet. Whatever you do, DON'T use those really fake sugary maraschinos that seem to be fluorescent pink-  they might be good in a cocktail, but you don't want that fake taste overwhelming the cookies.

As mentioned, a good variation of these would be raspberry chocolate cookies. Simply add about a teaspoon of the raspberry sauce from this recipe to the center of each cookie instead of the cherry. Actually, there are plenty of options to fill the center of these: caramel, white chocolate, more chocolate (death by chocolate cookie?!)...

These go really well with red wine ;-)

Time for a girls night?!