It drives my husband nuts that I don’t just stick to chocolate chip cookies – I always have to try new recipes. Very few cookies stack up to the good old-fashioned favorite – but I know they are out there, and I have to find them. Chocolate and cherries is a winning combination – the tartness of the cherry with the bittersweet chocolate is a match made in heaven. I actually had some good chocolate in the house left over from the holidays that I chopped up for these cookies, and I thought they were fabulous. My daughter was licking the bowl clean – yes, they were exceptional before baking. I saw this recipe in Cooking Light – and at less than 100 calories per cookie, they were calling out for me to bake them. I made them slightly bigger than a tablespoon, so maybe mine were a little more than 100 calories, but still. I adjusted the baking time below, because they were browning pretty quickly, so make sure to keep an eye on them.
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup whole-wheat flour
- 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 6 Tbl. unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 cup dried cherries
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- 3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
- cooking spray
Preparation
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Weigh or lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flours and next 3 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl; stir with a whisk.
Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat; add brown sugar, stirring until smooth. Add sugar mixture to flour mixture; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add cherries, vanilla, and egg; beat until combined. Fold in chocolate.
Drop dough by tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-11 minutes. Cool on pans 3 minutes or until almost firm. Remove cookies from pans; cool on wire racks. Makes about 30 cookies depending on the size.
For a printer-friendly version of this recipe, click here: Chocolate Cherry Cookies
First Look, Then Cook 
These look great! I’m going to have to try that base cookie sometime and add my own twists :-)
Thank you thank you for this recipe! It looks fantastic. I have been looking for a healthy oatmeal cookie recipe that doesn’t use applesauce. This looks great!
Mmmm! I want one!
These looks very good! You make chocolate and cherry sound like such a formidable combination that I dare not attempt to substitute the cherry with something else. And cherries cost an arm and a leg here!
I used coconut oil in place of the butter and they were just as yummy….also tried it with brown rice flour and spelt..just to give it a healthier twist!! Hmmm great recipe anyway yo do it!!! Thanx!
Wonderful! Love a healthy cookie! Well. I love any cookie but I REALLY love a healthy cookie!
can’t wait to show this recipe to my wife. she wants variety in her cooking.
—keith dillon
Hey! I made this cookies and followed this recipe to a T but the dough itself was not cohesive and my cookies differed from the ones in your picture in a couple of ways:
Let me just say these are DELICIOUS- I have a pile of them on a plate right now and have resisted having more than one cookie plus a bite of another my mom had. However, we had to pinch the dough together to form the balls because something about it was just not like your typical cookie dough. There were a lot of oats and the ratio of that to the flour I think made it a lot harder to pack. Why is there only 2/3 cup of flour but more than twice that much in oats? I feel like there should have been another egg in the mixture or something to hold the whole thing together.
Anyway- GREAT combo of flavors but I’m going to keep looking for a better recipe for Chocolate chunk cherry cookies.
My favorite part of making these was chopping the chocolate! I always love doing that myself rather than using chocolate chips
yum yum yum
Thanks!
That is the mystery of baking – you can follow the directions exactly, and sometimes it just doesn’t come out the same. Maybe my egg was bigger than yours? Did you pack your flour or oats when measuring? Well, I’m glad they tasted good – my dough was very similar to oatmeal cookie batter.