Cherry Bomb Cookies

By MarieR

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour no need to sift
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup (2 sticks; 8-ounces) butter softened
• 2 large eggs beaten with fork
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 jars (16-ounces each) maraschino cherries**, with stems
• powdered sugar for dipping

Details

Servings 5

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, rack in the middle position

**2 jars (16-ounces each) maraschino cherries WITH STEMS (about 65 cherries)

Open the jars of cherries and drain the cherries.
Leave them in the strainer while you make the cookie dough.
Put flour, baking powder, soda, and salt in a mixing bowl.
Stir with a fork until thoroughly mixed.
Cut in the softened butter with two forks, continuing to cut until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal.
(You can also do this in a food processor with the steel blade, using cold butter cut in half-inch chunks.)
Beat the eggs in a medium-sized bowl and combine them with the sugar.
Add the egg and sugar mixture to the rest of the ingredients and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Extract small bits of dough with your fingers and wrap them around each maraschino cherry, leaving the stem sticking out.
Press the bottoms of the dough-wrapped cherries down slightly on a greased baking sheet, 16 to a standard-sized sheet. (4 rows of 4 cookies works nicely.)

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 10 minutes. (Cookies will be white-if they start to brown, reduce the baking time.) Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet. Then dip them in the powdered sugar so that the entire cookie part is covered, but not the stem.

Yield: 5 to 6 dozen cookies.

Kids love these, probably because they can pick them up by the stem, pop the whole cookie in their mouths, and pull off the stem.
For Christmas, make these with one jar of red maraschino cherries and one jar of green.
Once they 're arranged on a platter lined with a paper doily, they're really pretty.