Turkey Day Baking

 These are the cupcakes and cookies I baked for my family's Turkey Day gathering.  My aunt, whose house we always go to, only specified something chocolate.  I took it from there.  :)  I made chocolate-covered cherry cookies and cherry cupcakes with almond frosting.  The chocolate-cherry cookies are undoubtably the most nostalgic I'll ever get posting here, with the exception of dishes that have yet to become special.  I think of these cookies as my grandmother's recipe, even though they're not.  My maternal grandmother made these on several occasions when I was a kid, and during my first year of college, she baked a batch and mailed them all the way from her house in Connecticut to my college in Ohio, along with a card she'd illustrated with a picture of her baking the cookies with her dog, Suki.  It was a sweet (no pun intended) gesture, and my then-roommate found her new favorite cookie!  This is the second time I've baked them myself and brought them to a family gathering.  My grandmother has severe dementia and is confined to a nursing home, so when others are trying to forget the sadness of the missing relative at the party, I try to look on the bright side and bring these cookies.  It helps that they're so darn good.

Recipe for Chocolate-Covered Cherry Cookies II

Ignore the photo in the above link.  The topping is supposed to completely cover the cherry.  The only other thing I'd add to the recipe directions is that the condensed milk, chocolate chips, and cherries do not go into the batter.  They're part of the topping that gets made after the batter is blended.  Enjoy!

Cherry Cupcakes with Almond Frosting

Out of the massive pile of recipes I've collected, I plucked this out this one to try.  It combines two of my favorite flavors, and I was curious to see how they worked together.  The recipe is a bit stuffy and perhaps over-complicated, but I stuck it out and ended up with very good, if slightly too sweet, cupcakes.  The cupcakes themselves end up a nice, pale shade of pink, so if you're that kind of person (or know someone who is), the color could be a plus!

Recipe for Cherry Cupcakes with Almond Frosting

Note:  My printed-out copy of this recipe only calls for 1/2 cup of butter for the cupcakes, as opposed to the 1 cup listed in the link above.  Apparently I made reduced-fat cupcakes without even trying--or noticing the difference.  I guess that's a good thing.

That's right, I whisked those egg whites by hand, baby.  And I'm not even going to pretend I didn't break a sweat.  The sad thing is, I didn't do it to work my arm muscles; I did it because I was too lazy to transfer the batter to a bowl, wash the mixer bowl, and use it again for the whites.

Carnage:

The pictures I took of the finished product are so bad that you'd be better off following the recipe link to see them.  Sorry.  I need to figure out how to disable the flash on my camera.