Triple Chocolate Cherry and Pecan Cookies

Valentine’s Day wouldn’t be complete without a little (or a lot!) of chocolate. Right?

Since cookies reign supreme in our household, that’s what I’ll be serving for dessert this year, but of course with a super chocolaty addition.

Kevin’s biggest weakness is cookies – traditional cookies that is – he loves to complain that I only make “fancy” cookies; of course his idea of “fancy” is anything besides chocolate chip, snicker doodle, or peanut butter. Although I will say that he isn’t very good at discrimination because low and behold every time I make said “fancy” cookies, they’re still consumed at the same rate as any other ordinary one. And these guys were no exception, proven by the fact that half the batch was wolfed down before they even had a chance to cool down.

The reason these are so undeniably delicious is because I’ve added in not one, not two, but three different sources of chocolate to make sure these cookies are downright decadent. I would describe them as an almost a hybrid between a cookie and brownie. The inside is gooey and chocolaty much like a fudge brownie, but the outside is still toothsome and firm like a traditional cookie

Win!

The first dose of chocolate comes in the form of cocoa powder, this is the easiest (and least messy) way to add chocolate flavoring to any cookie, brownie, or cake batter, but I find that it really doesn’t produce the over-the-top chocolate flavor that I crave.

So that brings us to the next form of chocolate…

Melted dark chocolate. Now, normally I don’t like to encourage you to spend ton of money on expensive ingredients, but in this case you want a good quality dark chocolate. And really we are using such a small amount that it won’t break the bank to splurge on something that’s really high quality. I think it maybe cost me $1.99 for a 3.5 ounce chocolate bar.

Now because, these are quite rich enough we’re going to throw in some semi-sweet chocolate chips, but because we don’t discriminate here, you can use whatever chocolate floats your boat. The last step is to throw in some tart dried cherries, and a little dose of pecans for some added texture and crunch.

Now, please PLEASE do not over bake these cookies, in fact you want them to be slightly underdone, otherwise that melty, ooey gooey center will be a hard cardboard hockey puck. Not cute.

Cute!