Chocolate Cherry Meltaway Thumbprint Cookies

 Super soft, meltaway chocolate shortbread cookies are filled with cherry pie filling and drizzled with white chocolate for one of the best cookies I have ever, EVER had.

Cookie baking season is ON. I couldn’t even wait to get started this year, for some reason.

I started baking Christmas cookies about 3 weeks ago. I’m thinking it’s a pregnancy craving which, for me, is odd. I usually crave liquids. With #1 I drank copious amounts of Sunny D. With #2 I managed to bust through a 1/2 gallon of milk a day. With #3 it was Brazilian Limeade. Yeah. Hello sugar overload!

But with this one, I seem to want cookies. All. The. Time.

So, now that it’s appropriate to be baking cookies constantly, I want to share my favorites with you.

Starting with these lovely little Chocolate Cherry Meltaway Thumbprint Cookies.

If you only make one cookie this season, make these.

These are the best cookie I have ever had.

Partly because I love chocolate and cherry together, but the real reason lies in the cookie texture.

These cookies just fall apart in your mouth. It’s like, you take a bite and then wonder “wait…where did that delicious little chocolate cookie go?” It just melts away, like butter.

My husband kept breaking these as he was eating them. They’re delicate, but not that delicate. I had to keep telling him to hold them like a newborn baby. Which is probably not the way you want to refer to cookies you are about to eat, but I got to annoy him and he couldn’t really care that much because he was eating delicious cookies at the same time.

You should know that I, however, had no problem with cookie breakage and I put away triple what he did.

For convenience, these cookies are filled with canned cherry pie filling. You could use  homemade, if you had it or wanted to make it. But I would recommend the canned because it is not overly wet and will not make your cookie soggy.

You will have about 1/2 a can leftover, so freeze it for something else. Like another batch of these cookies 😉

Chocolate Cherry Meltaway Thumbprint Cookies

 

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These cookies are best eaten in the first 48 hours after baking as they contain pie filling which can cause them to become soggy when kept too long.

Serves: Makes about 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients

• 1⅓ C. All-purpose Flour
• ⅓ C. Cocoa Powder
• ⅓ C. Cornstarch
• ⅔ C. Powdered Sugar
• ½ t. Salt
• 2 Sticks(1 C.) Salted Butter, softened
• 1 t. Vanilla
• 1 Can Cherry Pie Filling(you will only need about ½ the can)
• ½ C. White chocolate chips, melted

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or a non-stick mat.
3. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, cornstarch, powdered sugar, and salt until blended.
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and vanilla until smooth.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the butter and mix in slowly until just combined.
6. Scoop about 1½ T. of dough and roll into a smooth ball. Place on the prepared baking sheets, flatten to about ½" thickness with the palm of your hand, and use your thumb to make a large indentation in the center. Take care not to make the indentation to thin at the bottom or it will not hold the cherry filling as these cookies are very tender.
7. Repeat with the remaining dough.
8. Spoon about 2-3 cherries and a little sauce from the can of filling into each cookie.
9. Bake for 13-15 minutes in preheated oven.
10. Remove from oven and let cool on the sheet for 5 minutes. Carefully transfer to a wire rack with a thin spatula.
11. Pour melted white chocolate into a piping bag, snip off the tip to make a small opening, and drizzled the white chocolate over each cookie.

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