To Lisa, you win

Many months ago when I re-embraced my love of baking and was terribly unemployed, I asked some friends if they wanted some baked treats. My dear friend Lisa opted yes and requested cookies made with maraschino cherries.

Excuse me?

I was immediately struck with doubt and thought that whatever I ended up making was going to taste like shit. Really, I didn't think there was a way to make good cookies with maraschino cherries. I kept passive aggressively bating her with recipes made with real cherries that I thought would be vastly superior to her foolish recommendation of crap you put in a drink. I mean really, Lisa. You want a maraschino cherry, go to a bar or get a sundae.

I can be a bit of a B...

But, Lisa being a friend of mine, she stuck to her guns. She knew what she wanted and I was left to start making what I thought would be crap. Here is how it began:

You can bet your ass that if I'm not feeling a recipe that I'll be making it on the hooch.

I follow the odd instructions and measurements, only adding to my lack of confidence in what the end result would be. I do the dry and wet, repeatedly glancing at the piece of paper to check that I hadn't misread the amount of salt.

Looks about right. So I start to mix and things start to look off.

Admittedly this picture was taken before everything was fully incorporated, but trust me. It didn't look right. The dough was way too dry. Drier than anything I'd ever made and I was certain that this was going to wind up in the trash. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment or maybe I wanted to be right, but either way I continued against my better judgment. I started preheating the oven and began to chop the cherries.

 

Look at how dry that is! The cherries were drained and there was a lot of coconut, so before I balled these bad boys up I took a much needed break

That's my cat, Clavius Biscuit. She smells, doesn't clean herself very well, and loves to sleep by my head. I love her dearly. Back to the cookies!

So I ball them up and blah blah blah.

Get to the point, right? Ok. Lisa, you are brilliant. I was wrong. Dead wrong. Your choice of that key ingredient resulted in one of the most delicious cookies I have ever had. They were small, so the cuteness factor was pretty high. They were sweet and flavorful and right before your mouth would say, "hey now, that's too sweet," it would get a punch of SALT that made it divine. I will definitely make these again and again and again. Hell, I might make them again tonight...

So there you have it Lisa. You were right and I was wrong. Deliciously wrong.