Chocolate and Cherry Cookies

I've been incapacitated with a flare up of arthritis in my knees for most of the week, and thought I was going to have to face the family with nothing in the cake tin and no opportunity to buy anything either.

However, by Thursday afternoon the medication was kicking in properly and I felt I could stand long enough to make a quick batch of cookies.

This recipe, oringinally for Blueberry Choc-Chip Cookies, is from Dan Lepard's most recent Guardian column, and seemed to fit the bill for something quick and easy. I had to make a few adaptations so that I could use store cupboard ingredients - I only had strong wholemeal bread flour, I used vanilla instead of almond extract and dried cherries instead of blueberries. The dough was quite dry and crumbly when first mixed, but held together well when formed into balls by hand. My usual cookie recipe is quite wet and difficult to handle, so I might make this my basic recipe from now on. I got 20 small cookies from one batch of dough.

Unfortunately I chose a chocolate from the storecupboard which melted during cooking, so some of the cookies didn't look very pretty after baking, with puddles of chocolate on top, or dribbles around the edges. However, once the cookies had cooled and the chocolate had hardened, they were just as nice to eat as the prettier ones! Lesson learned for the next time I want chocolate chunks though - Green and Blacks Plain Chocolate for Cooks is only for melting!

I used the maximum amount of chocolate suggested, which made these very rich. They were nicely chewy too. My only criticism is of my variation - I wish I'd taken the time to cut the cherries in half, as they were quite large, so not evenly distributed. There would have been no problem with smaller blueberries or cranberries. A cranberry and orange variety would probably work very well - dare I mention Christmas yet!