1986 winner: chocolate covered cherry cookies

1 1/2 c  flour
    1/2 c  Unsweetened cocoa powder
    1/4 ts Salt
    1/4 ts baking powder
    1/4 ts Baking soda
    1/2 c  butter or margarine,
           Softened
      1 c  Sugar
      1    Egg
  1 1/2 ts vanilla
     48    Maraschino cherries
           Mmmmm---------------
           ------------frosting--- -- €
           ----------------------------
      6 oz Semisweet chocolate chips
    1/2 c  Sweetened condensed milk
           Cherry juice (4 to 5 tsp)
 

  
      1. In bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and
    baking soda. In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add
    egg and vanilla to butter-sugar mixture and beat well. Gradually add
    dry ingredients to butter-sugar mixture and beat until well blended.
      2. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet
    and push down center of each ball with thumb. Drain cherries and
    reserve juice. Place 1 cherry in center of each indentation. Heat
    oven to 350 degrees.
      3. For frosting, put chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk in
    small saucepan. Heat until chocolate melts. Stir in 4 teaspoons cherry
    juice.  If too thick, add more juice.
      4. Spoon 1 teaspoon frosting over each cherry. Spread to cover
    cherry. Bake 10 minutes or until done. Do not overcook. Remove to
    wire rack and cool.  The cookies freeze nicely.
      Winner Donna M. Farrell of Naperville entered her chocolate covered
    cherry cookie recipe: "Christmas and chocolate-covered cherries are
    forever entwined in my mind and memories. Not the expensive
    department store kind, mind you, with their dark bitter chocolate and
    runny syrup, but your basic Brach's. Each Christmas found the coveted
    white box stretching my stocking, two layers of cream-filled heaven
    with a cherry floating therein--and no requirement to share them with
    anyone.
      "Taste and calories have kept me away from the box of delights for
    many years, even after the incredible discovery that Brach's actually
    sold these morsels all year long. (How my parents managed to deceive
    me on this, I'll never know.) That is, until my mother-in-law came to
    Chicago one autumn with the ultimate cookie. A Christmas tradition in
    one bite. Nostalgia from the oven. Capable of reducing this
    36-year-old woman's taste buds and mentality to that of my 9-year-old
    daughter. A chocolate-covered cherry cookie!" from the Chicago
    Tribune annual Food Guide Holiday Cookie Contest December 4, 1986
 
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