Dark Chocolate Cherry Nut Cookies

I've finally finished my quest on the chocolate, fruit, nut cookies. The brother's birthday is on Wednesday, so the cookies were shipped out first thing this morning! There are so many cookie recipes I want to try, I told the hubby he won't be seeing any chocolate, fruit, nut cookies for a looooooong time.

In the end, I'm so glad I did so many trial runs on this cookie. I played with the recipe every time I made these cookies and the experiments paid off. This last batch (the final product) was the best batch. They look the best and they taste the best. My only hope is they still taste good once they've made it to Oregon.

I ended up chopping up pieces of dark chocolate to put in this cookie, along with semi-sweet chocolate chips. It also turned out I didn't have as many dried cherries on hand as I wanted so I ended up putting caramel bits on half the cookies. I basically put caramel bits on every cookie that looked like it didn't have cherries in them. I liked both versions!

I had, by this batch, figured out how much cocoa I wanted to use and found the best tasting sugar ratio. I'm so happy I'm done with this project, expect to see a completely different type of cookie on my blog soon!

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2/3 cup cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, room temp
4 tsp vanilla
1 cup dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups dried cherries
1 cup shelled pistachios, chopped
Caramel Bits (optional)

Directions:
1. In large mixing bowl, whisk flour through salt until combined. Set aside.
2. In a separate large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars, 2-3 minutes, or until creamy. Add eggs to bowl, mix completely. Add vanilla to bowl, mix completely.
3. In 3 additions, add flour mixture to butter mixture. Mix completely.
4. Fold in both chocolates, cherries, and pistachios.
5. Divide dough into 4 equal pieces and place each on a piece of plastic wrap. Roll each portion in a 12-inch log and wrap dough log up. Place in freezer for at least 1 hour.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
6. Grease cookie sheets with cooking spray. Remove dough log from freezer, slice into 1-inch rounds. Place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Repeat this step with all dough logs. If using caramel bits, push a few caramel bits into the top of each cookie before baking.
7. Bake for 9-11 minutes, or just until cookies look baked. Remove from oven, let cool on pan 2 minutes. Remove cookies to cooking rack, cool completely before storage.

Cookie Madness! This recipe made about 52 cookies.

Linked to: Retro Re-Pin Party