Everytime I am asked to help cater either a bridal shower or a baby shower almost always they ask me to bring my White Chocolate and Dried Cherry Cookies. I don’t know what it is about them that says shower, but they really do. Maybe it is the unexpected tartness mixed with the creaminess of the white chocolate that make them so good or it could be the unusual combination of sugars.

So if you are looking for a lighter and slightly different recipe give these a try for your next family get together.

White Chocolate Dried Cherry Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter(room temperature)
3/4 cup caramelized sugar*
3/4 cup powdered sugar(icing sugar)
2 eggs(room temperature)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cup All Purpose Flour
12 ounces good White Chocolate, chopped into small pieces
8 ounces dried Cherries(the more tart the better)

Preheat oven to 375 F.
Grease your cookie pans with butter(to make a more golden brown bottom). In a mixer, cream the butter for 3 minutes. Add both types of sugar and mix(on high)for another 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl with a spatula. Add eggs on at a time, mixing 1 minute each. Scrape down the bowl again. Add vanilla and mix for one more minute on medium high.
In a seperate bowl sift the flour, baking soda and salt together. With the mixer on slow speed, slowly add the flour mixture to the batter. Do not over mix. Take the bowl off the mixer and by hand mix in the white chocolate and cherries.
Usuing small ice cream or cookie scoop, scoop out the dough and place onto the prepared cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes. They will not look done. Take them out anyway, they will continue to cook on the pan. Leave them on the pan for 5 minutes after taking them out of the oven. Then transfer to a cooling rack.
*To make caramelized sugar for this recipe. Take a cookie sheet and line it with parchment paper. With the oven preheated to 375 F sprinkle 1 cup granulated sugar onto the middle of the pan. Bake for only about 5 minutes( you need to watch it the whole time because once it starts to caramelized it can quickly burn). Take out of oven and it cool completely. Once cooled, lift the blob of caramelized sugar and put into blender. Blend until the sugar is back to being super fine. Measure out 3/4 cup for the recipe. I usually make big batches of this and keep it around to use in other recipes.

So I was making a fallen souffle cake and had extra chocolate and cream lying around. So I decided since I was going to book club that I would make chocolate ganache tarts with candied walnuts.

There wasn’t really a recipe. I simply caramelized some walnuts with sugar. The I took the walnuts and placed them into the prebaked mini tart shells then I took the ganache mixture(12 oz of good semi sweet chocolate and 1 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream and 3oz of butter) and poured it over them. I refrigerated them for two hours and they were good to go. I would have prefered pecans but walnuts were the only nut in the house. They went over nicely at the book club and will most likely make them again.