Chocolate Cherry Cookies

Chocolate Cherry Cookies: This cocoa powder chocolate cookie recipe with maraschino cherries is quick and easy to make but sure to be a hit with the whole family!

Lover of chocolate cookies? Then don’t miss this rocky road cookie recipe and this Devil’s Food Cookie recipe, that also uses a chocolate cake mix!

 

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Chocolate and cherries are a classic combination! If you like chocolate-covered cherries, you’re going to love these cookies. The chewy chocolate cookies are tender and moist, and the chopped maraschino cherries add a yummy pop of cherry flavor. They basically taste like chocolate-covered cherry cookies.

These cookies are quick and easy to make but look so fancy, so they are perfect for a potluck, Valentine’s Day party, cookie exchange, baby shower, or any other event where you want to bring something impressive without a lot of fuss.

Jump to:

• Why You’ll Love This Recipe
• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Substitutions & Variations
• Storage
• Expert Tips and FAQs
• Recipe
• Comments

Ingredients

These maraschino chocolate cherry cookies use simple ingredients you can find at most grocery stores!

• ½ cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (or 2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled)
• ⅓ cup buttermilk
• 1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup maraschino cherries (stems removed, chopped and blotted dry)

See the printable recipe card below for quantities and step-by-step instructions.

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 400°F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In the bowl of a stand or in a large bowl with a hand mixer on low speed, cream the butter until smooth (about 30 seconds). 

3. Add sugar, egg, vanilla, cocoa powder, and buttermilk. Mix well.

4. Add in flour, salt, and baking soda. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until they are well combined. 

5. Fold in cherries until well combined. Make sure the cherries are well mixed into the dough so that they’re evenly distributed. 

Note: Be sure to dry out the chopped cherries very well on paper towel to soak up all the cherry juice, otherwise the dough will be wet and it could thin out.

6. Drop 1-2 rounded tablespoons (1-inch balls) or scoops from a small cookie scoop onto parchment lined cookie trays, spacing 2 inches apart. The cookies don’t spread very much when baked, so use bigger scoops of dough for bigger cookies.

7. Bake dough balls for 8-10 minutes or until cookie springs back when touched. Keep an eye on the baking time – make sure you don’t keep the cookies in the oven too long, or the bottoms will burn.
8. Let your maraschino cherry cookies cool on a wire rack and then enjoy!

Substitutions & Variations

We like to give you a few suggestions for ways to switch up the ingredients in these cherry chocolate chip cookies (or customize them to make them uniquely your own), because there’s nothing worse than realizing you’re out of something when you had your heart set on a cookie!

• Buttermilk – don’t have buttermilk? No problem! You can use powdered buttermilk (you just add water) or you can make your own. Simply add 1 teaspoon of white vinegar to your measuring cup, fill to ⅓ with milk (the higher fat percentage the better) and let it sit for 5 mins. It will start to curdle a bit, that’s normal – and there you have it, your buttermilk substitute.
• Cocoa powder – instead of cocoa powder, you can use 2 ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled.
• Swap fruits – not a fan of maraschino cherries? You could replace them with other fruits! I think that dried fruits, chopped up, would work best (like apricots, peaches, raisins, etc).
• More chocolate – for the chocolate lovers out there, you can fold in some chocolate chunks when you fold in the chopped cherry to make these double chocolate cherry cookies! You could also add white chocolate chips or dark chocolate chips instead of chunks of chocolate (or if you’re a big fan of chocolate, add multiple kinds).

Or if you have a chocolate cake mix and are looking for a way to make cookies with it, you’ll love this turtle cookie recipe too.

Storage

Store any leftover cherry chocolate cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for 2-3 days. These cookies are very soft and sticky, so it’s best to separate layers with waxed paper if you’re stacking them.  You could also put them in the fridge in an airtight container (with wax paper between layers) and they should keep for 3-5 days.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I do think that these cookies would freeze nicely as well! Put them in a freezer safe, airtight container and they should keep for a month or so.

Recipe