Finally found one I’d been looking for:
Super Chocolate Cherry Mounds (from Good Housekeeping, December 2004):
Makes 2 dozen large or 6 dozen small cookies
2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 ounces semisweet chocolate
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks, 6 ounces) butter or margarine, softened
3/4 c packed brown sugar
3/4 c granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 c dried tart cherries (don’t use Bing cherries, they’re not tart
enough; I used one 8 ounce bag tart montmorency cherries from Trader
Joe’s)
1 1/2 c. white chocolate chips
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Preheat oven to 350 F. On waxed paper, combine flour, cocoa, baking microwave-safe small bowl, melt semisweet chocolate on High 1 minute, stirring once halfway through heating.
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In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat butter and sugars until creamy, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, then melted chocolate and vanilla. At low speed, gradually add flour mixture; beat just until blended, occasionally scraping bowl. Stir in cherries and white chocolate chips.
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Drop cookies by scant 1/4 cups, 2 inches apart, on ungreased large cookie sheet. Or, for smaller cookies, drop by measuring tablespoons, about 1 inch apart. Bake large cookies 15 minutes 9small cookies 8 to 10 minutes) or until tops are just firm. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough. Store in tightly covered container at room temperature up to 1 week or in freezer up to 3 months.
My comments:
No clue why they say to mix flour etc. on waxed paper. That seems intentionally messy. I used a bowl. I’ve since heard that this is to help with pouring the ingredients into the mixer without getting in the way of the mixer head?
If you double the recipe, it won’t fit in the bowl of a 4.5 qt Kitchenaid mixer. Maybe the larger industrial-strength mixer… The second time I doubled this, I just measured everything in parallel (dirtying every bowl I own) but the mixer did a better job.
Watch baking time carefully. My cookies wound up being between the 2 sizes given and I overbaked the first few traysful. They were still tasty but not nearly as good as when I got them out of the oven earlier. The next trays, I wound up removing one cookie at 8 minutes, testing that while the rest baked another minute, etc. - finally decided that for the size I made, 10 minutes was utterly perfect.
I want to make these later today - should be interesting working it out with my new convection oven!!