Cherries for the pickin and perfect for these cookies.
A few weeks ago while my husband was off fishing in Alaska, my sister and I decided to get away to beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. It was a wonderful week with temperatures in the low 70’s and we stayed in the little town of Fish Creek, which was one of our favorite harbor towns we visited.
Before I get to the cookies I have to give you a few details about the trip. I can’t say I was always the adventurous twin, that would for sure be Terry. So, we decided that we were going to try the segway tour. We didn’t want to do the orchard tour on the segways because we thought that might be a little boring just going up and down cherry orchard rows. In hindsight we should have rethought that decision. We chose the Peninsula State Park tour and were along for the ride with a family of five. The first hour we were really doing pretty goods. The state park has quite a few hills that bikers come roaring down at 40-50 mph. We got the hang of going down hill but going uphill was a whole another thing. If you don’t lean far enough to the front then you kind of just stop and at that point your thinking you are going to fall and when you step off, the thing starts spinning. Between the two of us we fell 5 times. Funny thing is we had identical cuts on our right calves in exactly the same location. Go figure. Don’t know if we would do this again or not (maybe on flat ground). I would have to have my mind examined first. I think my new knees survived but I still have a little bit of a sore shoulder.
We had some wonderful meals while there and one of our favorites was at Alexander’s on our last night. One night we went to a theatre out in the woods — Penisula Players and saw “George In The Park”. A beautiful setting where you can take your wine and dinner and eat out on tables overlooking the lake before the play starts in a 7 million dollar indoor facility.
We bought so many sourvenigns and could not come home without some dried cherries, chocolate covered dried cherries and some of their wine (not cherry). We also bought back about 4 kinds of cheeses and we have eaten most of what I brought back.
We saw everything “cherry” in the area, cherry wines of course, pork dishes with cherry sauces, cherry pancakes, salads with cherries, cherry ice cream and had a delicious sour cherry margarita down by the lake one afternoon at Fred and Fuzzy’s. I have a recipe I’ve been wanting to do with some of my duck confit that I made and the dried cherries will be wonderful with the duck.
I thought these cherries would be perfect in my mother’s Coconut Oatmeal Cookies and the additional of dark chocolate had my mouth watering before they even got out of the oven.
It was a wonderful trip and good to have some sister time.
GIVEAWAY: — Don’t forget to sign up for my first give away for the Key Lime Plate Scraper. Go to this posting and go down to the bottom and leave any comment. I will draw a name on the 25th.
Almost all the ingredients except for the sugars and flour.
Cream the butter and shortening together then add in the sugars and eggs.
Nuts of your choice get chopped.
The dried cherries, I think, are the star of the cookies.
Use a small ice cream scoop and place your cookies on cookie sheet.
Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 c. unsalted butter room temperature
- 1/2 c. shortening
- 1 c. white sugar
- 1 c. brown sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1 1/2 c. all purpose four
- 1 tsp. soda
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 3 c. quick oats
- 1 c. coconut
- 1/2 c. chopped pecans optional
- 1 c. dried cherries chopped (I used tart cherries)
- 1 c. dark chocolate chips
Instructions
- Mix the flour, soda, cinnamon, and salt together with a whisk and set aside.
- In a mixing bowl, either by hand or using an electric mixer, mix the shortening, and the butter until creamy, add in the white and brown sugar and beat until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add in the eggs, one at a time and then the vanilla extract.
- Stir in the dry ingredients and mix well. Add in the quick oats, coconut, pecans, chocolate chips, and the dried cherries.
- Roll into golf ball size balls and mash to flatten a bit. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes. Bake a little less if you like chewy cookies. 4-6 dozen depending on how big you make them.
Recipe Notes
Hope you enjoy these.
*I used a small ice cream scoop to take these up. If they are for your family, I would make them about twice this big.
3 Comments
Donna Leibert
August 22, 2013 at 3:30 pmWe are getting several new neighbors and I think this cookie recipe sounds like what I need to welcome them to the neighborhood.
catherine irvin
August 23, 2013 at 1:23 pmLove your stories to go along with the food! Maybe you should have a travel blog too?!
Catherine
Sherry
August 24, 2013 at 6:40 amDonna and Catherine. I am adding you to the drawing mix for the Key Lime Sauce. I messed up on the above Giveaway comment and said “this” drawing. When I highlighted it in red the “this” that was suppose to take you to the original drawing post showed up red like everything else. My mistake.