Cherry Cordial Chocolate Cookies Recipe

Guys. Guys. These cookies. These. Cookies. They're frigging delicious. Ridiculously scrumptious. Overwhelmingly nom-able. Adjectives are failing me. 

The idea for these came to me from this delicious cherry cordial trifle I make and force feed people at parties. The only thing these cookies are missing is a dollop of homemade whipped cream on top for extra yum factor. 

Make them now. Do it.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter (at room temp)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp almond extract (or the imitation stuff if there are nut allergies in your family)
1 cup flour
1/4 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
3/4 cup dried cherries
3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate because that's what I had in the house but this would be really good with dark chocolate too)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fand place rack in center of oven.
 

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes).  

Add the egg and almond extract and beat until kind of fluffy.

Whisk together the cocoa powder, flour, baking powder, and salt.

 Have cute helpers help with the whisking. It's more fun that way.

This one wasn't much help... she just kept stealing and eating cherries and chocolate chips.

 Now add the flour/chocolate mix to the butter and egg mixture and mix it until it's just incorporated. 

Now add the cherries and the chocolate chips. Gently fold them in.

I use a 1.5 Tbsp scoop to make little cookie balls and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart. It'll make about 18 cookies.

Bake for about 10-12 minutes until their firm on the edges but still soft in the middle. Cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack.

If you're like me you're going to stick one of these in your mouth while their still piping hot and burn yourself. Delicious pain.

There you have it! I didn't have the motivation to make homemade whipped cream to dollop on these so I just took a bite and then shot a spray of whipped cream straight from the can in to my mouth. 

Because I'm classy.

Terrible Socializers

Oh, socialization. The ultimate concern of people who have never interacted with home schooled kids. Most people who "worry" about "lack of socialization" usually have gathered their information about the social skills of the home educated from the media and that one weird homeschooled kid who started school when they were in 7th grade and didn't have any friends. (If you have a story like this, it means you probably didn't bother trying to make friends with that poor weird new kid, either. Nice social skills school taught you, right?)

We have lots of friends. Some of them are homeschoolers too.

Some of them aren't.

Some of them are close to the same age.

Most are not.

We spend time out in the world interacting with people in a genuine way. 

The strange social structure created in school is never again repeated in real life. At no other time are we forced in to a room with only people of nearly our exact age and told to make friends. Only in school is it normal for a year or two age difference to mean you can't be friends. 

Our social group is diverse and amazing. We welcome all types of people with all different ages, interests, and backgrounds in to our world. It creates a rich and flourishing look in to the community that you just can't get from school. 

So yeah, we're terrible socializers too. We don't spend our day stuck in an age defined classroom with no real interaction with the beauty and dynamics of daily life in the real world. Poor us.

It's just these 3 and the baby. Alone. Together. All day. Every day.

Tulips!

We went out to Thanksgiving Point for the Tulip Festival today with Mysti and sweet baby H!

I took my fancy camera and got some decent pictures of everyone.