Cherry Chocolate Cookies

These cherry chocolate cookies are filled with sour cherry jam, dried cherries, and mini chocolate chips. They are totally cherry forward. 

Between the cherry preserves and the dried cherries, you cannot miss the amazing cherry flavor. 

Easy Black Forest Cake

This easy black forest cake is the perfect combination of chocolate cake, sweetened whipped cream, plus cherries cooked in cherry liqueur or brandy.

 
This black forest cake, or Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, is an adaptation of the German dessert made with lots of layers of chocolate sponge cake, whipped cream, and cherries topped with shaved chocolate. 

Chocolate Cherry Chunk Cookies {Small Batch}

These Chocolate Cherry Chunk Cookies are deeply chocolaty. The dough is bittersweet, and the cookies are filled with semisweet chocolate chips and dried cherries.

What I love about this recipe for chocolate cherry chunk cookies is that it is "small batch." It yields just eight cookies, which means that I won't be finishing off three dozen cookies in one sitting.

Fresh Cherry Clafoutis with Almonds

This Fresh Cherry Clafoutis with almonds is a tasty custardy dessert. Clafoutis (pronounced cla-foo-tee) is totally elegant, yet very easy to make. 

Cherry Clafoutis is a traditional French dessert. In fact, the traditional way it is baked is with un-pitted cherries. Evidently the thinking is that the cherry pits impart an almond flavor to the dessert.

Almond-Spice Christmas Wreath Cookies

These Almond-Spice Christmas Wreath Cookies are pretty easy to make, even if they do look fancy.

These almond-spice Christmas wreath cookies would be great to make with kids who are interested in baking. You'd just need to have double the amount of maraschino cherries on hand so they could sneak a few during the decorating phase.

Cherry Cobbler with a Sugar Cookie Crust

This Cherry Cobbler with a Sugar Cookie Crust is so delicious served warm and topped with vanilla ice cream. 

While Cherry Cobbler topped with biscuits is delicious and authentic, I was completely thrilled with this sugar cookie take on a cobbler. I've got to admit that this cherry cobbler with a sugar cookie crust would have a hard time competing with its biscuit topped cousin when just warm from the oven. Especially for traditionalists.. and Southerners.

Dark Chocolate Cherry Pocket Bread

While these Dark Chocolate Cherry Pocket Breads may look like muffins, they are actually little crusty sourdough rolls baked in a muffin tin.

The flavor in these mini loaves is distinctly sourdough, and the cherries and the dark chocolate unexpectedly play so well together with the sourdough flavor in these tiny babies.

Yes, they could be shaped into regular loaves or rolls, but aren't these way cuter?

Corpse Reviver #2 Cocktail

Prior to the Prohibition era, the Corpse Reviver #2 Cocktail was originally meant to cure hangovers. Thus, the name "Corpse Reviver."

I first found a recipe for this cocktail in my 1948 edition of The Standard Bartender's Guide by Patrick Gavin Duffy (interestingly, the book does not contain a recipe for #1).

The least prominent, but the most interesting ingredient in this cocktail is absinthe. It has quite a history and ritual for consumption, and was often thought of as a hallucinogenic and associated with addiction. You can read more about absinthe here. It's pretty fascinating. It is a botanical liqueur with a very high alcohol content. It is traditionally prepared by holding a slotted absinthe spoon and a sugar cube over the absinthe and slowly pouring iced water over the sugar until it dissolves.

Granola Energy Bars

Granola Energy Bars filled with toasted oats, almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, coconut, and a mixture of dried fruit. 

Granola energy bars. From my kitchen. With brown rice syrup. Something is completely askew in the universe.