Small-Scale Chocolate and Cherries: Black Forest Cookies

I usually like my cookies on the big side, and I often make them larger than a recipe specifies. But when our oven was broken and I was limited to baking in just a toaster oven, I resigned myself to making small cookies that could fit on a quarter-size baking sheet. Thalia Ho's recipe for "Black Forest Cookies" seemed to fit the bill. It's a relatively small-scale recipe (it calls for 300 grams total of flour + cooca powder, 200 grams of butter, and 200 grams of granulated sugar), but the stated yield is two dozen cookies. 

To make the dough, you beat room temperature butter with sugar until light and fluffy; add eggs and vanilla; mix in the dry ingredients (flour, Dutch cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking soda, and salt); and incorporate dark chocolate and dried sour cherries. You can bake the dough immediately. I used a #30 scoop and got 25 cookies from a batch. I was able to fit six cookies on a quarter-size baking sheet and I sprinkled the them with Maldon salt before baking.

The baked cookies were fairly nondescript, without cracks or any distinctive surface texture. They had a deep chocolate flavor with a nice amount of chocolate chips (I used Callebaut 2815 callets) and cherries mixed in to make them interesting. I liked the way they tasted but not their cake-like texture. There was no crisp crust or chewy interior, and for that reason, I wouldn't make them again.

 

Recipe: "Black Forest Cookies" from Wild Sweetness by Thalia Ho.