Red Cherry Cordial Boulders ❤️

Cherry is a powerful flavor, sometimes. It can be acidic, sweet, dry, or downright molasses-y. Cherries can present a challenge when you want to decouple their textures - dried, frozen, fresh, preserved - from their flavors. Extract is okay for this, but it typically only provides a couple of the notes you need to mimic cherry.

To get past this, you have to get creative, and embrace the freeze-dried varieties. I’ve posted recipes that rely on powdered freeze-dried fruit before, but never as a direct addition to a dough. It works remarkably well, and catches all of the flavors I wanted, with a lovely natural red tint. The cookies are free of the sometimes-tough regular dried fruits, and the recipe doesn’t have to account for the unpredictable added moisture of using fresh, frozen, or preserved cherries. That moisture can be remedied, by pre-cooking the cherries though that will also develop the syrupy “darker,” notes and in my experience you cannot remove enough moisture with just this method. So, how do you adjust for that moisture? You add flour. Or starch. Either is going to make your cookie creep closer and closer to being bread or cake, instead of a crispy-on-the-outside, fudgy-on-the-inside cookie-ass cookie.

So, just use the freeze-dried cherries. It’s easier and the results are better.

I use some ruby chocolate in this recipe, and I don’t recommend using any more than listed below. It brings a really nice creamy fruity flavor, but adding too much overwhelmed the other flavors. Replacing any or all of the chocolates with any other variety of chocolate chip will work just fine, though, if you prefer another kind.

Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Unsalted Butter, Softened
• 3.5 oz Granulated White Sugar
• 3 oz Light Brown Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
• 1.5 tsp Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
• 2 oz Cake Flour
• 5.5 oz All-Purpose Flour
• 3 oz Bittersweet Chocolate Chips
• 4 oz Semisweet Chocolate Chips
• 3 oz Ruby Chocolate, Roughly Chopped or Milk Chocolate Chips
• 1 Large Egg
• 1 1/2 tsp Cherry Extract
• 1 oz Powdered or Whole Freeze Dried Tart Cherries
• Optionally, Red Gel Food Dye

Directions

1. In a food processor, pulse the Freeze Dried Cherry, Cake Flour, All-Purpose Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and Salt until blended. If using Whole Freeze Dried Cherries, continue pulsing until no chunks remain. It won't be completely powdered, but the largest remaining pieces should be the same size as fine cornmeal.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars on medium speed briefly. Most recipes would suggest to do this for up to ten minutes, aiming for it to be as fluffy as possible. For these cookies to be fudgy and rich, they need much less aeration than that. As soon as the butter and sugar are smoothly blended and just beginning to lighten, stop your mixer. This also means you can do this by hand if you prefer.
3. Add the egg, Cherry Extract, and mix until completely blended and slightly thicker. If you're using food dye, now is the time to stir it in. My preferred brand is americolor, and you can get kits of 6-12 small bottles of assorted colors on amazon for a reasonable price. One of those kits will last you quite a while if you aren't a decor-focused baker.
4. Fold the flour blend into the wet ingredients until just a few streaks of flour remain, then add all of your chocolate and fold by hand until it is evenly distributed.
5. Cover and chill the dough for thirty minutes in the refrigerator. This allows the flour to rehydrate completely and for the freeze-dried cherries to absorb any excess moisture that the flour hasn't. The dough will spread less and be easier to work with. You can keep this dough in your refrigerator for three days, or transfer to the freezer to keep it until the freezer-burn sets in.

For Boulders

1. After chilling the dough, remove it from the refrigerator and portion into 4 oz mounds on a small parchment-lined pan. You will not be baking on this pan, so don't worry about crowding it. For smoother more even cookies, round the portions into a ball before placing on the parchment. For more textured cookies, roll into a ball, then tear those balls in half and loosely reform each portion with the craggy torn parts facing outward. Don't push them together too hard or you'll mash down all those crags.
2. When you're out of dough or the pan is full, pop it in the freezer for 30 minutes, and preheat your oven to 375ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
3. When properly chilled, take six of the portioned cookies out of the freezer, place them equidistant on your prepared baking sheet, and bake them on the middle rack for 14-24 minutes. I know this range is huge, but start checking them at 14 minutes. hey probably won't be done, but the number of variables in this method is very high, so the baking time is very variable. Once the edges are starting to turn golden, the top is dry , but it still looks puffy and steamy on the inside remove them from the oven.
4. Let cool on the baking sheet on your counter. Do not place a rack under the pan. Do not remove the cookies to a rack — they will fall apart if you try. These take at least 30 minutes to cool completely, and you do not want to speed up this process. As the outsides cool, the insides are still cooking.

For Normal-Sized Cookies

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. After chilling the dough, remove it from the refrigerator and portion into 1.5 oz mounds on a parchment-lined baking sheet. For smoother more even cookies, round the portions into a ball before placing on the parchment. For more textured cookies, roll into a ball, then tear those balls in half and loosely reform each portion with the craggy torn parts facing outward.
3. You should be able to fit 12 cookies on each pan, leaving 2" between them.
4. Bake on the middle rack for 12-14 minutes until the edges are set and golden, and the top looks dry and still a bit puffy. Let cool on the baking sheet completely.