Almond Nut Butter Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chunks and Cherries

Almonds, dark chocolate, and dried cherries are super stars in flavor, seeming to have an affinity towards each other. They are also powerhouses in nutrition, being packed with antioxidents and vitamin E. Delicious in their natural form as trail mix, the threesome also play a star role in our cookies, Almond Nut Butter Cookies, a modification of got milk? the cookie book's recipe "Peanut Butter CCCs." Our adapted form has MaraNatha All Natural Roasted Almond Butter Creamy, chunks of dark chocolate chopped from a large Hershey's special dark chocolate bar, and dried cherries. These cookies pack a powerful nut flavor, but look like chocolate chip cookies with a soft, chewy texture from the chocolate and dried fruit and with crunchy edges. Add dried apricots, dry-roasted peanuts or almonds, and milk-chocolate to create a different personality to almond butter cookies. These cookies hollar for a cold glass of almond milk or beckon to be snacks during a long bike ride or hike.

Make the dough ahead of time and refrigerate before baking the cookies to allow the ingredients time to combine and enchance the flavor. You can go ahead and bake all the dough and have cookies ready to go in your freezer. Just toast the cookies in the toaster oven for a minute for a freshly-baked taste. Or, you can save the dough in the freezer and bake small batches at your whim and make your house frequently emit the tentalizing aroma of warm-baked cookies. To cool off our house from the heat of the oven doubled with the Florida summer temperatures, we keep our windows and balcony door wide open, so our neighbors pause, sniff the air, and come knocking on our door, begging for some treats. Dare we say, we've become the most popular neighbors in town!

Almond Nut Butter Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chunks and Dried Cherries
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup creamy almond butter
3/4 cup packed ark brown sugar
1/4 cup grandualted sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/3cups dark chocolate chunks or chips
1/2 cup dried cherries
(optional additions are dry-roasted peanuts and almonds, coarsely chopped, dried apricots, and milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate morsels)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter, almond butter, sugars, and vanilla until well combined. Beat in the egg. Scrape down the bowl using a rubber spatula and beat for a few more seconds.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda. Add the dry ingredietns to the wet mixture and mix on low speed just until absorbed. Combine the chocolate chunks and dried cherries in a small bowl and stir into the dough.
4. Using about 1 Tablespoon of dough for each cookie, gently shape the dough into bowls and drop them about 3 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Using a 1 1/2inch diameter ice-cream scoop and leviling the dough off across the top before dropping onto the baking sheets makes perfectly uniform cookies. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until the cookies begin to color. Do not overbake. Let sit 2 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.