Chocolate covered cherry cookies

---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05
  
       Title: 1986 Winner: Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies
  Categories: Cookies, Holiday
       Yield: 48 servings
  
   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)
  
     Preparation time: 45 minutes Baking time: 10 minutes
   
       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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