Sure Deb - they're from a gal called "jaz" and were the hit of my cookie tray followed closely by ..
a toffee butter cookie dipped in chocolate.
Here's Jaz's recipe:
For the cookie base:
1 cup butter, softened
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp. almond extract
pinch salt
2 cups flour (all purpose)
Beat the butter and cream cheese together until thoroughly combined; add sugar and extracts and beat until smooth. Stir salt into flour and add, mixing until well blended.
Scoop out 1-tablespoon sized balls of dough out onto a parchment lined cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. With the back of a small round spoon (or your finger), make a small indentation in each.
Bake at 350 for 12 minutes or more, until very lightly browned. If necessary, deepen the indentations with the spoon (they tend to disappear as the cookies bake), then remove from the sheet and cool.
The cookies can be made to this point and frozen.
To finish:
Drain a large bottle of Amarena Fabbri cherries (reserve the syrup for another use, if you want).
Melt a half pound or so of dark chocolate (you can temper it if you like, but it's really not necessary). Spoon it into a pastry bag or ziplock bag with a small hole snipped out of one corner. Pipe a small amount of choclate onto each cookie and top with a cherry before the chocolate sets.
(I actually forgot to print out that part of the recipe, so my version was, cherry in the cookie imprint and then melted chocolate chips with a touch of veg oil and "fork drizzled" on top of the cookie. - then used the rest of the chocolate to dip the toffee butter cookies into. )
Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!
